Call for Submissions — Volume 1, Issue 2 (December 2026)

The Journal of Constitutional Change (JCC) is now receiving submissions for Volume 1, Issue 2, to be published in December 2026. The Journal is a peer-reviewed, diamond open-access journal devoted to a single question in its many forms: how do constitutions change, and who decides?

We welcome work on any jurisdiction. The Journal treats Asia, Southeast Asia and the wider Global South not as cases awaiting explanation by existing theory, but as places from which theory is generated — and it publishes work on European and North American constitutional change on exactly the same terms.

What we are looking for

Submissions are invited across the full scope of the Journal, including: amendment procedures, constitutional rigidity and amendment culture; unamendability, eternity clauses, basic-structure doctrines and the judicial review of constitutional amendments; constitution-making, constituent power and constitutional replacement; informal change through interpretation, convention and practice; abusive and authoritarian constitutionalism, democratic backsliding and constitutional resilience; constitutional identity and its uses; constitutional courts as agents, guardians and targets of change; asymmetric and sub-national constitutional change; constitutional change in plural, religious and post-colonial orders; and the transnational migration of constitutional ideas.

A manuscript may study a single jurisdiction, but its argument must be legible and useful to a reader working on another. Descriptive national surveys that do not engage the comparative literature are returned without review.

Article types and length Type Length (incl. footnotes) Abstract Article 8,000–12,000 words 200–250 words Comparative Note 4,000–6,000 words 200–250 words Amendment Watch 3,000–5,000 words 100–150 words Review Essay 2,500–5,000 words 100–150 words Reply 2,000–3,000 words 100–150 words Key dates Stage Date Submissions open Now — manuscripts are received continuously Closing date for this issue 15 October 2026 Editorial screening decision Within 7 days of submission for this call (ordinarily 14 days) First decision after external review Normally within 6 weeks of submission for this call (ordinarily 10 weeks, 14 at the outside) Revised manuscripts due Within 2 weeks of a minor-revision decision Final acceptance for this issue 5 December 2026 Volume 1, Issue 2 published December 2026 How placement in this issue works

Authors should read those dates together rather than separately. The Journal's published timetable allows up to fourteen weeks to a first decision; for this call the editorial office works to a compressed schedule, but a compressed schedule depends on reviewers being secured promptly, and the Journal will not shorten review by cutting it short.

Placement in Volume 1, Issue 2 therefore depends on two things: that review is completed in time, and that the manuscript requires no more than minor revision. A manuscript that misses the issue loses nothing. It is carried forward to Volume 2, Issue 1 (June 2027) without resubmission, without a further round of review, and without prejudice of any kind. The editors will tell you which issue your article is heading for at the point of the first decision, rather than leaving you to guess.

What to send

• A title page, uploaded as a separate file: author names, full affiliations, ORCID for every author, and the required statements (AI use, constitutional engagement, funding, competing interests, author contributions, prior publication, data availability, ethics approval).
• An anonymised manuscript as the main document, containing no name, affiliation, acknowledgement or funding detail, with continuous line numbering and footnotes rather than endnotes.
• Any data, code or appendices as further files.

Templates for both files are available on the Journal website. JCC operates format-free submission: you are not asked to convert your footnotes to the Journal's house style until your article is accepted. Any recognised citation style is acceptable at submission, provided it is used consistently.

Three requirements that shape everything we publish

1. Comparative engagement. Every submission situates its claim within the comparative literature on constitutional change, and includes a jurisdictional statement of no more than seventy-five words explaining which jurisdictions are examined, why those, and what work the comparison does.
2. Primary materials. Constitutional provisions, judgments, drafting records and legislation are cited in their original language, with a translation and the translator identified. Propositions of foreign law rest on sources the author has personally consulted.
3. Disclosure of constitutional engagement. Authors declare any advisory, drafting, litigation, adjudicative, political or advocacy role in the constitutional change they analyse. Such involvement is valuable and is never a ground for rejection; concealing it is a breach of publication ethics.

No charges

JCC is a diamond open-access journal. There is no submission fee, no article processing charge, no page or colour charge and no reader charge. Authors retain copyright, and articles are published under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence (CC BY 4.0). Every article receives a registered DOI, and accepted manuscripts are copy-edited at no charge to the author.

How to submit

Submit through the Journal's online system at https://ijcal.profesionallegal.com/index.php/jcc. Authors who are unsure whether their work fits are welcome to send a title and a paragraph to the editorial office before submitting; the editors would rather answer a short enquiry than desk-reject a manuscript that took months to write.

Editorial office: jcc@profesionallegal.com or novendrilawfaculty@ung.ac.id
Editor-in-Chief: Novendri M. Nggilu
Publisher: Gorontalo Legal Research and Consulting, in partnership with the Faculty of Law, Universitas Negeri Gorontalo