The 2013 Constitution of Vietnam : Improvement toward Constitutionalism and Challenges

This paper examines the 2013 Constitution of Vietnam through the lens of constitutionalism. It focuses on two important aspects of constitutionalism, i.e. constitutional protection and human rights protection.1 The paper first discusses the constitutional provisions on the constitutional supremacy, constitutional protection, followed by a critique on the challenges to the realization of constitutional supremacy and implementation of the human rights limitation clause in Vietnam. The paper shows that the 2013 Constitution of Vietnam does reflect, from its words, values of constitutionalism such as enhanced provisions on constitutional supremacy and human rights. However, the paper argues that Vietnam is facing significant challenges in bringing the supreme value to the constitution in practice.