Constitutional courts versus supreme courts

International Journal of Constitutional Law

Volumn 5, Issue 1, 2007, Pages 44-68

  Garlicki, Lech ^a  

^a European Court of Human Rights ^*  (Poland)

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EID: 33846338550     PISSN: 14742640     EISSN: 14742659     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1093/icon/mol044     Document Type: Article

References (93)

1. Louis Favoreu, Constitutional Review in Europe, in Constitutionalism and Rights 46 (Louis Henkin & Albert J. Rosenthal, eds., Columbia Univ. Press 1989).
2. In this context, Favoreu warns against too hasty generalizations and recalls the famous statement of Hans Kelsen: "[i]t is impossible ...to propose a uniform solution for all possible constitutions: constitutional review will have to be organized according to the specific characteristics of each of them." Id., at 51.
3. See, e.g., La Justice Constitutionnelle en Europe Centrale [Constitutional Justice in Central Europe] [Marc Verdussen ed., Emile Bruylant 1997];
4. Herman Schwartz, The Struggle for Constitutional Justice in Post-Communist Europe (Chicago Univ. Press 2002)
5. Constitutional Justice, East and West: Democratic Legitimacy and Constitutional Courts in Post-Communist Europe in a Comparative Perspective (Wojciech Sadurski ed., Kluwer 2002).
6. France is the only European country in which constitutional adjudication takes the form, almost exclusively, of a preventive review. Except for the disputes related to the distribution of lawmaking competences between the parliament and the cabinet (Fr. Const. art. 37, sec. 2), the Conseil Constitutionnel only has jurisdiction to review a statute before it has been promulgated.
7. Mauro Cappelletti & William Cohen, Comparative Constitutional Law 76-83 (Bobbs-Merrill 1979)
8. Favoreu, supra note 1, at 44-46.
9. But see Alan R. Brewer-Carias, Judicial Review in Comparative Law 128-131 (Cambridge Univ. Press 1989).
10. In this procedure, the right to bring the case before the constitutional court is reserved for the highest state bodies and officials (the president of the republic, the cabinet, the ombudsman), groups of members of parliament (i.e., parliamentary opposition), and similar bodies. The constitutionality of a statute is examined in abstracto, not in the context of any actual case.
11. This procedure is based on referrals of so-called constitutional questions by ordinary courts to the constitutional court. In most systems, if an ordinary court finds that a statutory provision that it has to apply in a concrete case is unconstitutional, it must refer the question of constitutionality.
12. This is the only procedure allowing an individual access to the constitutional court. A person who already has lost his or her case before ordinary courts can complain before the constitutional court that their constitutional rights have been violated. In some systems (e.g., Poland), a complaint can only be directed against the legal rule that determined the judicial or administrative ruling in the case. In other systems (e.g., Germany and Spain), a complaint can also be directed against the ruling itself. See Brunner, infra, note 58.
13. As András Sajó observes, "[c]onstitutional adjudication does not primarily affect the legislature but it does the ordinary administration of justice, and in practice, it extends constitutionalism (primarily through the protection of individual rights to areas beyond public law, to criminal, administrative and private law." András Sajo, Limiting Government: An Introduction to Constitutioalism 243 (Central Eur. Univ. Press 1999).
14. See, e.g., La Constitutionalisation des Branches du droit [The Constitutionalization of Areas of the Law] (Bertrand Mathieu & MichelVerpeaux eds. (Economica 1998)
15. Robert Alexy, Verfassungsrecht und einfaches Recht - Verfassungsgerichtsbarkeit und Fachgerichtsbarkeit [Constitutional law and other law - jurisdiction over the constitution and jurisdiction over specific subject matters], in 6] Veröffentlichungen der Vereinigung der Deutschen Staatsrechtslehrer [Publications of the Association of German Public Law Teachers] 12-14(de Gruyter 2002) (hereinafter, "VVDStRL").
16. Werner Heun, Verfassungsrecht, id. at 109.
17. Gesetz über das Bundesverfassungsgericht vom 12. März 1951 [Statute on the Federal Constitutional Court in the version of 12 March 1951], BVerfGG, BGBI. I at 243.
18. Initially, the Constitutional Court (like all other courts in Germany) was included in the administrative and budgetary structure of the Federal Ministry of Justice. In 1952, the Court demanded independence from the executive branch (so-called Statusdenkschrift: See 6 Jahrbuch des offentlichen Rechts 144 (1957)), and it has since managed to consolidate its position as a "constitutional organ of the state."
19. The first important controversy arose around the procedure of incidental review of constitutionality. The FCC Act provided that any court cound, at any stage of the judicial process, refer a constitutional question to the Constitutional Court but only via an appropriate supreme court, which had the right to submit its own opinion on the question referred by the lower court. In the practice of the Bundesgerichtschof (supreme court in civil and criminal matters) such opinions began to take the form of all but complete judgements on constitutionality and were published in the official collection of the Bundesgerichtschof's decisions, sometimes before the Constitutional Court had rendered its decision. In 1955, the Constitutional Court declared that the supreme courts were not allowed to submit their opinions. In response, all five supreme court presidents addressed a note of protest to the President of the Constitutional Court. Finally, in July 1956, the Federal Constitutional Court Act was amended and the participation of supreme courts in the procedure of judicial referrals was abolished. See Hans Joachim Faller, Bundesverfassungsgericht und Bundesgerichtshof, 115 Archiv des offentlichen Rechts 189-192 (1990).
20. Since then, it remains within the discretion of the Constitutional Court to seek opinions from the supreme courts: See Renate Jaeger & Siegfriend Bross, Die Beziehungen zwischen dem Bundesverfassungsgericht und deb ubrigen einzestaatlichen Rechtsprechungsorganen [The Relationship between the Federal Constitutional Court and other individual state judicial organs], 11 Europaische Grundrechtenzeitung 31 (2004).
21. Bundesverfassungsgericht [BVerfG] [Federal Constitutional Court] January 16, 1957, 6 Entscheidungen des Bundesverfassungsgerichts [Decisions of the Federal Constitutional Court] [BVerfGE] 32-45.
22. BVerfG, January 15, 1958, 7 BVerfGE 198-230.
23. Alexy, supra note 10, at 10-12.
24. So-called "Schumann'sche Formel" and "Heck'sche Formel": See, e. g., Gerd Roellecke, Aufgabe und Stellung des BVerfG in der Gerichtsbarkeit, in III: Handbuch des Staatsrechts der BRD 1225-1226 (Josef Isensee & PaulP. Kirchhof eds., C.F. Müller Verlag 2004),
25. Hans-Joachim Koch. Bundesverfassungsgericht und Fachgerichte [Federal Constitutional Court and Courts for Specific Subject Matters], in Rechtstheorie und Rechtsdogmatik im Austausch [Exchange between Legal Theory and Legal Dogmatism] (Wildfried Erbguth, Friedrich Müller & Volker Neumann eds., Duncker & Humblot 1999) 137.
26. See also Jörg Berkemann, Das BVerfG und "seine" Fachgerichtsbarkeiten [The Federal Constitutional Court (BVerfG) and "its own" jurisdiction over specific subject matters], 56 Das Deutsches Verwaltungsblatt 1036 (DVBI 1966)
27. Georg Hermes, VVDStRL, supra note 10, at: 146.
28. As shown by Wolfgang Hoffmann-Riem (Nachvollziehende Grundrechtekontrolle. Zum Verhaltniss von Fach- und Verfassungsgerichtsbarkeit [Monitoring of fundamental rights explained: On the relationship between specific subject matter and constitutional law jurisdiction], 128 AoR 177 (2003) in 1999, a year when the Bundesgerichtsh of issued some 7000 judgments, applicants prevailed in only ten constitutional complaints against such judgments.
29. For example, the Court may declare that a law is "incompatible" (unvereinbar) with the Constitution, or that a law is "not yet" unconstitutional, or it may establish which interpretation of the law is in conformity with the Constitution.
30. See, e.g., Gerhard Robbers, Fur ein neues Verhaltnis zwischen BVerfG und Fachgerichtsbarkeit [Toward a new relationship between the Federal Constitutional Court (BVerfG) and the jurisdiction over specific subject matter], 51 Neue Juristische Wochenschrift 938 (1998).
31. Some authors observe that "criticism of the Court has recently developed into a hitherto unknown dimension": See Philip Kunig, VVDStRL, supra note 10, at 36
32. and, in particular, note the emergence of a new "zivilistische Fundamentalismus." Koch, supra note 19, at 165.
33. See also Stephan Korioth, Bundesverfassungsgericht und Rechtsprechung (Fachgerichte) [Federal Constitutional Court and Jurisprudence (Courts for Specific Subject Matters)], in Festschrift 50 Jahre Bundesverfassungsgericht [Festschrift: 50 Years of the Federal Constitutional Court] 57 (Peter Badura & Horst Dreier eds., Paul Siebeck 2001), noting a growing number of critics of the Constitutional Court.
34. For some examples, see Jaeger & Bross, supra note 14, at, 12.
35. One of them relates to the interpretation of the "expropriation" clause (article 14 of the Basic Law). In 1952, the Bundesgerichtsh of decided that article 14 allows the right to compensation to be extended, as well, to situations of "de facto expropriation" ("enteignungsgleiches Eingriff"), even if such extension had not been provided at the statutory level. The Constitutional Court has, on numerous occasions, hinted that it was not ready to support such an interpretation of article 14. It was, however, only in 1981 that the Court clearly decided that article 14 could not serve as an adequate legal basis for granting compensation in such cases. The Bundesgerichtshof had to accept this, but, unwilling to forsake its own jurisprudence, it established that the right to compensation results from principles of customary law. It eliminated the constitutional dimension (and thus the direct jurisdiction of the Constitutional Court). See Hans Joachim Faller, supra note 14, at 199-202.
36. Quite recently, the Constitutional Court experienced some problems with assuring full compliance of the penal courts in respect to the length of detention preceding a final conviction, in particular, postconviction by the first instance court. The local courts have not always been ready to follow the position of the Constitutional Court; in consequence, the Court had to quash their decisions and to remind them of the binding nature of its constitutional interpretation. See, in particular, the decisions of BVerfG, February 22, 2005, 2 BvR 109/05, http://www.bverfg.de/entscheidungen/rk20050222_2bvr010905.html (last visited Oct. 16, 2006), 1-47
37. and BVerfG, December 5, 2005, 2 BvR 1964/05, http://www.bverfg.de/ entscheidungen/rk20051205_2bvr196405.html (last visited Oct. 16, 2006), 1-109.
38. See examples quoted by Faller, supra note 14, at 202-206
39. Kunig, VVDStRL, supra note 10, at 37
40. Roellecke, supra note 18, at 1230.
41. See also the judgment of the Constitutional Court of 6 December 2005, BVerfG, December 6, 2005, 1 BvR 1905/02, http://www.bverfg.de/ entscheidungen/rs20051206_1bvr190502.html (last visited Oct. 16, 2006), 1-72.
42. See, e.g., John Henry Merryman & Vincenzo Vigoriti, When Courts Collide: Constitution and Cassation in Italy, 15 Am. J. Comp. L. 665-686 (1967).
43. See especially Gustavo Zagrebelsky, La Giustizia Costituzionale [Constitutional Adjudication] 156 (Il Mulino 1988)
44. Thierry Di Manio, Le Juge Constitutionnel et la technique des decisions "Interpretatives" en France et en Italie [The Constitutional Judge and the Technique of "Interpretative" Decision in France and Italy] (Economica 1997)
45. Enzo Cheli & Filippo Donati, Methods and Criteria of Judgment on the Question of Rights to Freedom in Italy, in Human Rights and Judicial Review: A Comparative Perspective 235-236 (David M. Beatty ed., Springer 1994).
46. Guiseppe La Greca, Current Situation and Planned Reforms in the Light of Italian Experience, in The Supreme Court and the Constitutional Court: Third Meeting of Presidents of Supreme Courts of Central and Eastern European Countries 9 (Council of Europe 1997).
47. Giancarlo Rolla & Tania Groppi, Between Politics and the Law: The Development of Constitutional Review in Italy, Constitutional Justice, supra note 2, at 151.
48. Alessandro Pizzorusso, Présentation de la Cour constitutionnelle italienne [Overview of the Italian Constitutional Court], 6 Les Cahiers du Conseil Constitutionnel 31 (1998).
49. Corte cost., 7 July 1998, n.292 (subsequently confirmed by decisions of 19 Nov. 1999 n.429, 19 Jun. 2000 n.214 and 22 Nov. 2000 n.529).
50. Corte cost., cass., 25 July 2002 n. 394.
51. Corte cost., cass., 30 June 2003 n. 243.
52. "Le decisioni interpretative di rigetto della Corte costituzionale non hanno efficiacia erga omnes, a differenza di quelle dichiarative dell'illegittimita costituzionale di norme, e pertanto determinano solo un vincolo negativo per il giudice del procedimento in cui e stata sollevata la relativa questione. In tutti gli altri casi il giudice conserva il potere-dovere di interpretare in piena autonomia le disposizioni di legge a norma dell'art 101 comma 2 Cost..." Corte Cass. 31 Mar 2004, n.23016. See Cassazione Penale 2710 (2004).
53. See also commentaries of Guiseppe Romeo, id., at 2715-2718,
54. and Paolo Antonio Bruno, id., at 2718-2746. The Constitutional Court had to yield and, in the decision of Corte cost., cass., 22 July 2005 n.229, it found article 303 unconstitutional as interpreted by the Court of Cassation.
55. See Cassazione Penale 3246 (2005)
56. Guiseppe Romeo, Meglio tardi che mai? [Better late than never?], id., at 3254-3259. Thus, the Constitutional Court affirmed the concept of "living law" and left the resolution of the problem to the legislature.
57. See, e.g., the assessment of Schwartz, supra note 2, at 49.
58. For a more detailed presentation, see Lech Garlicki, Vingt ans du Tribunal constitutionnel polonais [Twenty years of the Polish Constititional Tribunal], in Melanges Favoreu [Favoreu Collection] (Presses Univ. Aix-Marseille, forthcoming 2006).
59. See an interesting comparison of Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary proposed by Zdenek Kuhn, Making Constitutionalism Horizontal: Three Different Central European Strategies, in The Constitution in Private Relations: Expanding Constitutionalism 236-240 (András Sajó & Renata Uitz eds., Eleven International 2005).
60. Initially, the Polish system had made a distinction between "interpretative decisions" and "interpretative resolutions" of the Constitutional Court. The former represent a type of judgment on the constitutionality of a statute and follow the Italian pattern of sentenza interpretative. The latter were issued by the Constitutional Court in the exercise of its other competence, namely, the establishment of "universally binding interpretation of statutes" (see Georg Brunner & Lech Garlicki Verfassungsgerichtsbarkeit in Polen: Analysen und Enstcheidungssammlung 1986-1997 [Constitutional Law Jurisdiction in Poland: Collected Analyses and Decisions 1986-1997]) 67-68 (Nomos 1999). It was the exercise of that latter competence that first produced conflicts between the Constitutional Court and the Supreme Court. The 1997 Constitution abolished the procedure of "interpretative resolutions," but, at the same time, it provided that the "judgments of the Constitutional Court (i.e., decisions concerning constitutionality of statutes) are final and universally binding." Polish Const. art. 190, §1.
61. Resolution of February 21, 1995, I PZP 2/95 (OSNAPiUS - Jurisprudence of the Chamber of Administration, Labour Law and Social Security, 1995, No. 17, item 214); judgment of May 14, 1996, III ARN 93/95 (OSNAPiUS 1996) No. 23, item 352).
62. For more detailed presentation, see generally Garlicki, supra note 37.
63. One may recall a recent controversy concerning the scope of reopening the cassation proceedings before the Supreme Court that found its resolution only when the legislature "helped" the Tribunal by adopting necessary amendments to the Code of Civil Procedure. See Garlicki, supra note 37.
64. Zdenek Kuhn, supra note 38, at 223-225.
65. See also Pavel Holländer, The Role of the Constitutional Court for the application of the Constitution in case decisions of ordinary courts, 86 Archiv fur Rechtsund Sozialphilosophie 537 (2000)
66. Wojciech Sadurski, Rights before Courts 21-23 (Springer 2005).
67. See also Jiri Priban, Judicial Power vs. Democratic Representation, in Constitutional Justice, supra note 2, at 380 (observing that "[t]he main conflict between the Constitutional Court and the Supreme Court as the highest body of the ordinary judiciary was about the Constitutional Court's power to review decisions of ordinary courts and therefore its entitlement to review the constitutionality of the Supreme Court's decisions").
68. The Hungarian Constitutional Court, under the presidency of László Sólyom, ranked among the most active courts in the region. While it does not have direct powers to review the constitutionality of individual judicial decisions, it has developed several techniques of review of the jurisprudence of ordinary courts (in particular, the "living law concept"). See Schwartz, supra note 2, at 83.
69. Conflict with the Supreme Court was inevitable and lessened only after profound changes in the Constitutional Court's judicial philosophy had taken place in the beginning of the current decade: See Gábor Halmai, The Hungarian Approach to Constitutional Review: The End of Activism? in Constitutional Justice, supra note 2, at 204-207.
70. The Russian courts attempted to establish their autonomous right to set aside unconstitutional statutes. As Sadurski notes, "[R]ussia provides a good example of such a conflict; it resulted in a victory for the Constitutional Court which fiercely fought against granting regular courts the power to make their own declarations as to the unconstitutionality of statutes. It maintained that the only avenue opened to courts in such cases was to stay the proceedings and to address the Constitutional Court in the form of 'concrete review. '...The Constitutional Court, in a decision of 16 June 1998, taking the form of a binding interpretation of the Constitution, reminded the courts that it was itself the only body competent to decide upon issues of constitutionality, either in abstracto or in concrete cases...It is only in regard to sub-statutory acts that the regular courts may directly apply the Constitution rather than the act." Sadurski, supra note 43, at 20-21.
71. "Tout ne va pas pour le mieux dans le meilleur des mondes. Les relations entre la Courd'arbitrage et les deux autres jurisdictions suprêmes, la Cour de cassation et le Conseil d'État, connaissent des moments de tension. L'autorité de plusieurs arrêts de la juridiction constitutionnelle se heurte à de veritables resistances." ["Not everything goes better in the best of worlds. The relations between the Court of Arbitrage and the two other supreme jurisdictions, the Court of Cassation and the Council of State, experience moments of tension. The authority of numerous opinions of the constitutional jurisdiction runs into real resistance."] Francis Delpérée Belgique, XX Annuaire internationale de justice Constitutionelle 176 (2004), who quotes the opinions of Jacques Van Compernolle and Marc Verdussen.
72. Herbert Steininger, Empfiehlt es sich, die Zustandigkeiten des Verfassungsgerichtshofs durch Enfuhrung einer umfassenden, auch Akte der Gerichtsbarkeit erfassenden Individualverfassungsbeschwerde zu erweitern? [Is it advisable to expand the responsibilities of the Constitutional Court through the introduction of an individual constitutional complaint that is comprehensive and covers acts of jurisdiction?], in Verfassungstag [Constitutional Daily] 1994 (Verlag Österreich 1995).
73. "After more than a quarter of a century since the coming into force of the 1978 Constitution, the respective place of each of the Spanish top courts, far from being generally accepted, has evolved into a far-reaching institutional conflict. In February [2004] the then three living former presidents of the Constitutional Court issued an unprecedented public declaration, under the headline 'A constitutional crisis,' following an equally unprecedented ruling of the Tribunal Supremo condemning the judges of the Tribunal Constiticional to a fine of 500 euros each." Pedro Cruz Villalón, Conflict between Tribunal Constitucional and Tribunal Supremo - A National Experience, in The Future of the European Judicial System in a Comparative Perspective (Ingolf Pernice, Juliane Kokott, Cheryl Saunders eds., Nomos 2006) 111
74. see also Francisco Javier Matia Portilla, Espagne, XX Annuaire Internationale de justice constitutionnelle: Espagne [Constitutional Justice Annual: Spain], 187-189 (2004)
75. Leslie Turano, Spain: Qui Custodiet Ipsos Custodes?: The Struggle for Jurisdiction between the Tribunal Constitucional and the Tribunal Supremo, 4 Int'l J. Const. L. (I•CON) 151-162 (2006) (offering another interesting presentation of this conflict and discussing several earlier clashes between the two courts).
76. See, e.g., Louis L. Favoreu & Thierry Renoux, Rapport général introductive, [General introductory report] in La Cour de cassation et la Constitution de la Republique [The Court of Cassation and the Constitution of the Republic] (Presses Univ. Aix-Marseille 1994)
77. Grandes decisions du Conseil constitutionnel [Landmark decisions of the Constitutional Council] 163-169 (Louis Favoreu & Loïc Philip, eds., Dalloz-Sirey 13th ed. 2005).
78. But conflicts between jurisdictions remain constantly present, particularly in the traditional area of the civil law. See, for illustration, an exchange of views of François Luchaire, Les fondements constitutionnels du droit civil [Constitutional bases of civil law], 2 Revue trimestrielle de droit civil 245 (1982)
79. Christian Atias, La civilisation du droit constitutionnel, 7 Revue française de droit Constitutionnel [R.F.D.C.] 435, 436 (1991) (Fr.)
80. Jean Yves Cherot, Les rapports du Droit Constitutionnel et Droit Civil, réponse à Christian Atias [Constitutional and Civil Law Reports, a Response to Christian Atias], 7 R.F.D.C. 439, 441 (1991).
81. Similarly, in particular, Heun, supra note 11, at 110-111
82. Turano, supra note 48, at 162.
83. Sadurski, supra note 43, at 21.
84. See, e.g. Louis Favoreiu: American and European Models of Constitutional Justice, in Comparative and Private International Law: Essays in Honor of John Henry Merryman on His Seventieth Birthday, (David S. Clark, ed., Duncker & Humblot 1990)
85. Ruti Teitel, Transitional Jurisprudence: The Role of Law in Political Transformation, 106 Yale L.J. 2032 (1996)
86. Sadurski, supra note 43 at 40-58.
87. Bruce Ackerman, The Future of Liberal Revolution 143 (Yale Univ. Press 1992). Ackerman observes further: "[s]urely it is well within the court's capacity to construe its statutory jurisdiction narrowly."
88. Leslie Turano, supra note 48, at 161.
89. Several authors note, in this context, differences in the professional background and, as a consequence, in the "constitutional temperament" of constitutional judges (who often come from academia, sometimes from politics, and not too often from the judiciary) and supreme court judges (who usually spend most of their professional lives within the judicial system).
90. See Sadurski, supra note 43, at 19-25.
91. See Brunner's distinction of "echte" and "unechte" procedures of constitutional complaint in Georg Brunner, Verfassungsgerichtsbarkeit in Polen [Constitutional Complaint in Poland] 48-52 (Nomos 1999).
92. The Conseil Constitutionnel, due to the French system of contrôle préalable, is deprived even of such possibility. Thus, persuasion seems to be the only way to convince ordinary and administrative courts to follow the Conseil's interpretation of the Constitution. As it has already been mentioned, in the last three decades, the Conseil has appeared more and more successful in that persuasion.
93. Mutatis mutandis, the same may be said of the relationship between the European Court of Human Rights (as wel as the European Court of Justice) and the national supreme/constitutional courts.