The Constitution is both a source of pride and an object of political battle in Vietnam. Its importance as a symbol of the Vietnamese nation, the victory over foreign powers, and the unification of the nation under Party rule, has also led to several substantial revisions – of which the most recent such process, in 2001 and 2002, led to significant debates on the role of the Constitution, state agencies, political accountability and other difficult subjects that were discussed in Chapter 1. But in Vietnam, as in China and other socialist states, the problem of constitutional enforcement and review has always been awkward: the Constitution is defined as the “fundamental law” of the nation, and yet it remains largely unused to rescind inconsistent legislation, to establish the hierarchy of legislation, or as a standard to judge acts that violate its terms or those who commit such acts.

In China, filling this important but symbolic constitutional vessel with substantive enforcement became a significant political issue during the 1980s and 1990s. In China as in Vietnam, the issues of constitutional enforcement – or “constitutional protection,” as it is often called in Vietnam (bao ve hien phap or bao hien) – have primarily implicated three problems: what to do about statutes or actions by the national legislature that may violate the Constitution; how to handle national statutes, local laws, or other national or local regulatory documents that violate higher law; and how to treat acts by state or Party officials that may violate the Constitution.