Is an unamendable constitution undemocratic?

Encyclopedia of Opinion

Question: Is an unamendable constitution undemocratic?
Position‹2 of 3›: No, an unamendable constitution is democratic
Argument‹4 of 4: Democracy is more than a process

Democracy also involves protecting individual rights and personal freedoms. An unamendable constitution offers these protections.

The argument

At its core, democracy is about preserving individual rights and freedoms. Unamendable constitutions provide a far better mechanism for preventing human rights abuses and restrictions of civil rights than amendable constitutions. Therefore, unamendable constitutions are not just compatible with democracy, they further democracy. Unamendable constitutional provisions are supposed to function as a barrier to change. This barrier of change is needed because there are aspects of the constitution that should be protected from alteration. Amendments that are made in the constitution are because of the majority. There are aspects of the constitution that are supposed to be protected from the whims of the majority because it reflects the nation's identity.

Context

Democracy does not just involve the process through which we determine leaders and make collective decisions. Democracy means protecting certain inalienable rights. It means guaranteeing individual freedoms. In this regard, an unamendable constitution furthers democracy.

Premises

[P1]Democracy is fundamentally about preserving individual rights and freedoms, not merely a voting process, and unamendable constitutions better prevent human-rights and civil-rights abuses than amendable ones. [P2] Some constitutional provisions reflect the nation's identity and should be protected from the whims of a transient majority, which is exactly what an unamendable barrier to change provides. [C] Therefore, because democracy is more than a process, an unamendable constitution is democratic.

Counter-arguments

There are some aspects of the constitution that should be ammended. Certain states may be too reluctant to seek out more democratic methods of effective constitutional change. Parts of the constitution, specifically Article V of the constitution, can be subject to rigidity as well as being inconsistent with democratic legitimacy. Many have been critical because Article V makes the constitution difficult for the majority to ammend the consitution, something which is considered to be a tenement in democracy.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] Defining democracy as the preservation of rights sets aside the majority rule the rival position rests on, so the premise settles the question by definition; and unamendability protects whatever a constitution happens to contain, which may entrench a restriction as easily as a right. [Rejecting P2] Insulating provisions from a transient majority is the standard case for supermajority thresholds rather than for unamendability — as the counter observes, provisions once thought to express a nation's identity have needed changing, and a clause that cannot be revised leaves no lawful route to correct it.