The problem of maintaining legal continuity during moments of revolutionary political change has been a constant concern of legal scholars. Take, for instance, the different ways in which two of the twentieth century’s towering figures of constitutional theory—Hans Kelsen and Carl Schmitt—dealt with this problem. For Kelsen, a revolution is something that, in general terms, “occurs whenever the legal order of a community is nullified and replaced by a new order in an illegitimate way, that is in a way not prescribed by the first order itself.”1 There is not much we can learn from this definition regarding the possibility of enacting significant constitutional transformations by remaining within the boundaries imposed by the legal system and respecting its rules of constitutional change. However, Kelsen does throw light on a central aspect of the relationship between substantive political change and legal continuity, that is, the importance of the latter for the legitimacy of the former. At least with respect to this definition, Kelsen seems to imply that constitutional transformations outside of the established rules of change are illegitimate. Unconstitutional political transformations, even when they are successful, carry a stain that makes its supporters uneasy and that only time can wash out.