Constitutional Courts and Legislation

Sadurski, Wojciech

doi:10.1007/978-94-017-8935-6_4

Wojciech Sadurski^2,3

1036 Accesses
2 Citations

Abstract

The design of constitutional courts in CEE created an environment in which the constitutional courts gained a significant role in law-making. This role has not been confined to striking down provisions that conflicted with the legislative choices; it also included “putting the parliaments on notice” that they should change specific laws, indicating the directions of these changes, and even, at times, “rewriting” the laws themselves. This, naturally, placed these courts on a collision course with their respective legislatures, or rather, with the political majorities, as parliamentary minorities often found the courts to be useful allies in their struggle to overturn the laws on which they were outvoted. Both the strength of the clash and the nature of the alliance between the courts and political oppositions largely depended on specific local factors. The tendency to establish alliances between the majority of the court and the parliamentary opposition, on the other hand, depends on the capacity and costs incurred by the opposition in challenging the law in question before the court. Various specific examples of such uneasy relationships between constitutional courts and legislatures in CEE are discussed in this Chapter.

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Notes

1.
Alec Stone Sweet, Governing with Judges (Oxford University Press 2000) at 61.
2.
Rumyana Kolarova, “Bulgaria: A Self-Restricting Court”, East Europ. Constit. Rev. 2:2 (Spring 1983): 48–50 at 49.
3.
Id. at 49.
4.
US v. Manuel Then, 56 F.3d 464, 466 (2d Cir. 1995).
5.
Id. at 469.
6.
For a detailed description, see Gábor Halmai & Kim Lane Scheppele, “Living Well Is the Best Revenge: The Hungarian Approach to Judging the Past”, in A. James McAdams (ed), Transitional Justice and the Rule of Law in New Democracies (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1997): 155–84 at 174–7; see also Chap. 9 in this book, pp. 353–54.
7.
Decision 48/1998 of 23 November 1998, described in Bull. Const. Case Law 3 (1998): 421–22; see also Sect. 6.1, pp. 177–78.
8.
Decision U-I-13/94 of 21 January 1994; English translation on file with the author.
9.
Martin Shapiro, “Some Conditions for the Success of Constitutional Courts: Lessons from the U.S. Experience”, in Wojciech Sadurski, ed., Constitutional Justice, East and West (Kluwer Law International: The Hague, 2002): 37–60 at 38; see also Stone Sweet, supra note 1 at 75.
10.
Irena Grudzinska-Gross, “Interview with Professor Andrzej Zoll, Chief Justice of the Polish Constitutional Tribunal”, East Europ. Constit. Rev. 6:1 (Winter 1987): 77–78 at 78.
11.
Interview with Prof. Lucian Mihai, President of the Constitutional Court, Bucharest 9 March 2001.
12.
See Keith E. Whittington, “Legislative Sanctions and the Strategic Environment of Judicial Review”, I.CON 1 (2003): 446–474 at 462–3.
13.
Stone Sweet, supra note 1 at 52–55.
14.
Id. at 54.
15.
Stephen M. Griffin, American Constitutionalism: From Theory to Politics (Princeton University Press: Princeton 1996) at 98.
16.
Stone Sweet, supra note 1 at 53–54.
17.
Renate Weber, “Constitutionalism as a Vehicle for Democratic Consolidation in Romania”, in Jan Zielonka, ed., Democratic Consolidation in Eastern Europe, vol. I: Institutional Engineering (Oxford University Press: Oxford 2001): 212–42 at 227.
18.
Petr Kopecký, “The Czech Republic: From the Burden of the Old Federal Constitution to the Constitutional Horse Trading among Political Parties”, in Zielonka, ed., supra note 17: 319–46 at 343.
19.
Interview with Mr Petr Pithart, President of the Senate of the Czech Republic, Prague 21 March 2002.
20.
In this respect the Czech Senate is different from the Polish and Romanian Senates, where the term of office for Senators is the same as for members of the lower chamber: 4 years.
21.
Decision of the Czech Constitutional Court no. 13/99 of 15 September 1999; see Jiri Priban, “Judicial Power vs. Democratic Representation: The Culture of Constitutionalism and Human Rights in the Czech Legal System”, in Sadurski, ed., supra note 9: 373–94 at 387.
22.
Such a suggestion was made by the President of the Senate; Interview with Mr Petr Pithart, President of the Senate of the Czech Republic, Prague 21 March 2002. It is also interesting to note that the President of the Constitutional Court, Zdenek Kessler, filed a dissenting opinion to this judgment.
23.
Interview with Mr. Mark Gillis, Prague 21 March 2002.
24.
Stone Sweet, supra note 1 at 55.
25.
Id. at 55.
26.
As is the case in e.g. Bulgaria and Ukraine, see Chap. 1, note 139.
27.
As is the case of Hungary, see Chap. 1, note 140.
28.
“Constitution Watch: Bulgaria”, East Europ. Constit. Rev. 4:2 (Spring 1995): 5–7 at 7.
29.
Venelin I. Ganev, “Interview with Constitutional Court Justices Todor Todorov and Tsanko Hadjistoichev”, East Europ. Constit. Rev. 6:1 (Winter 1997): 65–71 at 66.
30.
See Anna M. Ludwikowska, Sądownictwo konstytucyjne w Europie Srodkowo-Wschodniej w okresie przeksztalcen demokratycznych (TNOiK, Torun 1997) at 180.
31.
Interview with Professor Neno Nenovsky, former Justice of the Constitutional Court of Bulgaria (in 1991–94), Sofia 10 May 2001.
32.
Id.
33.
Alina Mungiu-Pippidi, “Interview with President of the Romanian Constitutional Court, Ion Muraru”, East Europ. Constit. Rev. 6:1 (Winter 1997): 78–83 at 81.
34.
Leigh Sprague, “The Russian Constitutional Court”, Parker Sch. J.E. Eur. L. 4 (1997): 339–56 at 349.
35.
Id.
36.
Interview with Professor Boris A. Strashun, of Center for Analysis of Constitutional Justice at Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation, Moscow, 19 November 2001.
37.
Interview with Professor Andrey Nikolaevich Medushevsky, constitutional expert of the Institute of Law and Public Policy, Moscow, 19 November 2001.
38.
Id.
39.
Id.
40.
Oral remarks by Dr Pedro Magalhães, Workshop on Constitutional Adjudication in Southern and Western Europe, Fondazione Adriano Olivetti, Rome, 25 March 2002.
41.
For a stromg plea against the use of the notion of judicial activism, see Aharon Barak, “The Supreme Court, 2001 Term – Foreword: A Judge on the Judging: The Role of a Supreme Court in a Democracy”, Harvard Law Review 116 (2002): 16–162 at 126–27.
42.
These features are pointed to by Ganev in the context of his discussion of whether the Bulgarian Constitutional Court can be dubbed as “activist”, see Venelin I. Ganev, “The Bulgarian Constitutional Court, 1991–1997: A Success Story in Context”, Europe-Asia Studies 55 (2003): 597–611 at 606.
43.
See East European Case Reporter of Constitutional Law 3 (1996), no. 1.
44.
See Sect. 6.1.
45.
Id.
46.
See Sect. 9.2.
47.
See Sect. 9.3.
48.
For example, the Hungarian Constitutional Court struck down important aspects of a number of laws that were meant to constitute a package of austerity measures introduced by the Government in 1995; see e.g. decision 43/1995 of 30 June 1995 on social security benefits, reprinted in László Sólyom & Georg Brunner, Constitutional Judiciary in a New Democracy: The Hungarian Constitutional Court (University of Michigan Press: Ann Arbor, 2000) at 323–32.
49.
See, e.g., the decision of the Polish Constitutional Tribunal; no. K 8/97 of 16 December 1997 striking down a number of provisions of the tax statute of 26 July 1991, reprinted in Orzecznictwo Trybunaáu Konstytucyjnego, Rok 1997 (Warszawa: C.H. Beck 1998): 545–59.
50.
In Slovenia, the Constitutional Court decided Case No. U-I-206/97, annulling on 17 June 1998 part of a law on the amendments to the Law on Foreigners. The amendments would have changed the required period before an immigrant could apply for permanent resident status from 3 to 8 years. See “Constitution Watch: Slovenia”, East Europ. Constit. Rev. 7:3 (Summer 1998): 36–37.
51.
On 13 April 1991, the Hungarian Constitutional Court declared the use of uniform personal identification numbers unconstitutional, decision 15/1991, reprinted in Sólyom & Brunner, supra note 48 at 139–50.
52.
The Croatian Constitutional Court invalidated, in 1998, a provision of the 1993 Code on Equating Retirement Incomes on the basis that the code demanded that pensions increase relative to changes in the cost of living rather than relative to the increase of average incomes, see “Constitution Watch: Croatia”, East Europ. Constit. Rev. 7:3 (Summer 1998): 8–9 at 9.
53.
Decision K. 19/96 of 24 February 1997, in Orzecznictwo, supra note 49: 65–77 at 72.
54.
Interview with Professor Todor Todorov, Justice of the Constitutional Court of Bulgaria, Sofia 11 May 2001. A similar presumption of constitutionality is in practice adopted by the Russian Constitutional Court; Interview with Dr Vladimir G. Yaroslavtsev, Justice of the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation, Moscow, 19 November 2001.
55.
E.g. in Poland, decision of the Constitutional Tribunal K 17/93 of 7 June 1994.
56.
Pavel Holländer, “The Role of the Czech Constitutional Court: Application of the Constitution in Case Decisions of Ordinary Courts”, Parker Sch. J.E. Eur. L. 4 (1997): 445–65 at 450–52.
57.
Id. at 452.
58.
For a description of this case, see Mark Gillis, “Constitutionalism in the Czech Republic: An Investigation of Two Major Aspects – The Infusion of Constitutional Principles into the Remainder of the Legal Order and the Generally Binding Nature of Constitutional Court Decisions”, Journal of Constitutional Law in Eastern and Central Europe 5 (1998): 105–245 at 139–42.
59.
Interview with Professor Neno Nenovsky, former Justice of the Constitutional Court of Bulgaria (in 1991–94), Sofia 10 May 2001.
60.
Decision no. 64/1991 (XII 17) AB of 17 December 1991, East European Case Reporter of Constitutional Law 1 (1994) 27.
61.
E.g. Decision of Polish Constitutional Tribunal no. K 22/95 of 29 May 1996 in Orzecznictwo Trybunaáu Konstytucyjnego, Rok 1996 vol. 1 (Warszawa: C.H. Beck, 1996): 106–21 at 120.
62.
See Decision of Polish Constitutional Tribunal no. K 13/95 of 24 September 1996, in Orzecznictwo Trybunaáu Konstytucyjnego, Rok 1996 [Case Law of the Constitutional Tribunal, 1996], vol. 2 (Warszawa: C.H. Beck, 1996): 79–105 at 104.
63.
Judgment of the Constitutional Court of the Czech Republic no. 46/96 of 13 November 1997, quoted in Holländer, supra note 56 at 463 n. 23.
64.
E.g. Decision of Polish Constitutional Tribunal no. K 19/96 of 24 February 1997, supra note 53 at 72–73.
65.
Id. at 72–73.
66.
See, e.g., Decision of Polish Constitutional Tribunal no. K. 2/98 of 23 March 1999, in Orzecznictwo Trybunaáu Konstytucyjnego w 1999 r. vol. 1 (Warszawa: TK 1999): 176–81 at 178 emphasis added.
67.
James Bradley Thayer, “The Origin and Scope of the American Doctrine of Constitutional Law”, Harv. L. Rev. 7 (1893): 17–156 at 144.
68.
Andras Mink, “Interview with László Sólyom, President of the Hungarian Constitutional Court”, East Europ. Constit. Rev. 6:1 (Winter 1997): 71–76 at 72.
69.
Quoted by Gábor Halmai, “Comment: The Constitutional Court of the Republic of Hungary”, East European Case Reporter of Constitutional Law 1 (1994) 116 at 116.
70.
Id.
71.
Decision 23/1990 of 31 October 1990, reprinted in Sólyom & Brunner, supra note 48 at 118–38.
72.
Id. at 133 (Sólyom, P., concurring).
73.
Decision no. K 26/96 of 28 May 1997, in Orzecznictwo Trybunalu Konstytucyjnego, Rok 1997 (Warszawa: C.H. Beck, 1998): 173–246. This decision was reprinted in East European Case Reporter of Constitutional Law 6 (1999): 38–129.
74.
The new Constitution was adopted by the National Assembly on 2 April 1997, subjected to the constitutional referendum on 25 May 1997, promulgated by the President on 16 July 1997, and entered into force on 17 October 1997.
75.
Jan Wolenski, “Glosa do orzeczenia TK z 28 V 1997, K 26/96”, Panstwo i Prawo 53:1 (1998): 88–98 at 91.
76.
Id at 91.
77.
Id.
78.
Id.
79.
See T. Alexander Aleinikoff, “Constitutional Law in the Age of Balancing”, Yale L. J. 96 (1987) 943–1005 at 987.
80.
Enzo Cheli & Filippo Donati, “Methods and Criteria of Judgment on the Questions of Rights to Freedom in Italy”, in David M. Beatty, ed., Human Rights and Judicial Review (Kluwer: Dordrecht 1994): 227–65 at 261.
81.
Resolution U-I-121/97 of 23 May 1997, reprinted in East European Case Reporter of Constitutional Law 4 (1997): 279–303.
82.
Id. at 288, italics added.
83.
Id. at 286.

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University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia
Wojciech Sadurski
University of Warsaw, Warsaw, Poland
Wojciech Sadurski

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Sadurski, W. (2014). Constitutional Courts and Legislation. In: Rights Before Courts. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-8935-6_4

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-8935-6_4
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