The Dismissal of a Constitutional Council in Vietnam : A Failure or a Necessary Tactical Withdrawal?

Despite relatively strong public support and a promising start, where a specialized constitutional council was included in one of the last drafts, Vietnam’s lawmakers eventually rejected the formation of a specialized constitutional review mechanism in the 2013 Constitution. Reviews of secondary literature, however, revealed that the true reasons of such rejection are varied and nuanced. They range from functionality debate to a more structural claim that a specialized mechanism would be too foreign to the political system. By revisiting the opponents ’claims, this paper wishes to assess whether the rejection of such a proposal was a failure for its proponents or a necessary “tactical withdrawal”. Should the constitutional council have been accepted, would it have done more harm than good because of the lack of independence a constitutional review agency must have? The authors attempt to answer this question by examining the hypothetical legal position of a constitutional council under Vietnam’s current political system and comparing it to constitutional review agencies in other transitional democracies in Asia.