Difference Form

Difference form is the drafting form the constitutional register requires of every amendment to an enrolled text: the amendment does not restate the law, it states only what it changes — strike these words at this clause; insert these words after that one — against a named, dated state of the text, carrying its date, its sponsors, the reasons argued for it, and the exact prior wording it presumes to find.

The form is held to for a reason older than tact: a full restatement can smuggle, and a difference cannot. A reader confronted with a fresh copy of the whole compact must trust that only the announced thing moved; a reader confronted with a difference can see the entire change, because the difference is the entire change. Forward in time, this is what makes the laying-open reviewable by everyone the amendment will bind. Backward, it is what lets every clause in force be asked who put it there — and answer with a date.

Because the text moves, two proposals drafted against the same state of the law can collide, the second presuming wording the first has already struck. Certification returns such a difference to its sponsors to be redrafted against the text as amended: the proposer reconciles, and the register never does.

Full doctrine: The Enrolled Text (lore).