Judicial Review in Central and Eastern Europe: Rationales or Rationalizations?

Israel Law Review

Volumn 42, Issue 3, 2009, Pages 500-527

  Sadurski, Wojciech ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF SYDNEY   (Australia)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 84920487863     PISSN: 00212237     EISSN: 20479336     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0021223700000704     Document Type: Article

References (46)

1. Martin Shapiro, The Success of Judicial Review, in Constitutional Dialogues in Comparative Perspective 193 (Sally J. Kenney, William M. Reisinger, & John C. Reitz eds., 1999).
2. The Constitution of Romania, art. 144 (a)
3. The Constitution of Hungary, art. 26(4)
4. The Constitution of Poland, art. 122 (3).
5. Wojciech Sadurski, Rights Before Courts: A Study of Constitutional Courts in Postcommunist States of Central and Eastern Europe 8 (2005) [hereinafter Sadurski, Rights Before Courts].
6. See also Sadurski, Rights Before Courts, Rights Before Courts: A Study of Constitutional Courts in Postcommunist States of Central and Eastern Europe, at 33–40.
7. See Wojciech Sadurski, Postcommunist Charters of Rights in Europe and the US Bill of Rights, 65 J. L. & Contemporary Problems 101 (2002).
8. European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, Nov. 4, 1950, 213 U.N.T.S. 221 [hereinafter ECHR].
9. I use throughout this Article a shorthand description “Kelsenian” in accordance with the conventionally adopted terminology but I am well aware that today's constitutional courts in Europe, thus characterized, do not fully match the model designed by Hans Kelsen and implemented in the pre-Second World War constitutional courts in Austria and Czechoslovakia. For one thing, Kelsen had not envisaged that adjudication would be based on constitutional bills of rights. For another, he famously described his ideal as that of a “negative legislator” while some of the most activist courts today provide legislators with positive formulas for rescuing the laws from unconstitutionality. See Alec Stone Sweet, Governing with Judges 135 (2000).
10. Bruce Ackerman, The Rise of World Constitutionalism, 83 Va. L. Rev. 771, 776 (1997).
11. Radoslav Prochazka, Mission Accomplished: On Founding Constitutional Adjudication IN Central Europe 17–20 (2002).
12. Louis Favoreu, American and European Models of Constitutional Justice, in Comparative and Private International Law: Essays in Honour of John Henry Merryman on His Seventieth Birthday 110 (David S. Clark ed., 1990).
13. Ferejohn and Pasquino claim that in each of the European post-authoritarian constitutional systems, including in Eastern Europe after 1989, “the very fact that there was a transition under way from an old and distrusted regime to a new one, meant that judges were viewed with particular suspicion, as potential holders of constitutional review authority,” John Ferejohn & Pasqual Pasquino, Constitutional Courts as Deliberative Institutions: Towards an Institutional Theory of Constitutional Justice, in Constitutional Justice, East and West 21,31 (Wojciech Sadurski ed., 2002), footnote omitted.
14. See Sadurski, Rights Before Courts, Constitutional Justice, East and West, at 43.
15. Ruth G. Teitel, Trans itionalJurisprudence, 106 Yale L. J. 2009, 2032 (1997).
16. See 18 J. Dem. (2007) (special issue devoted to the issue of democratic backsliding in CEE).
17. Aharon Barak, Foreword: A Judge on the Judging: The Role of a Supreme Court in a Democracy, 116 Harv. L. Rev. 17, 63 (2002).
18. Teitel, Transitional Jurisprudence, Harv. L. Rev., at 2034.
19. Decision no. 60/1994 of 24 December 1994, reprinted in László Sólyom & Georg Brunner, Constitutional Judiciary in a New Democracy: The Hungarian Constitutional Court 306 (2000).
20. Id. at 312.
21. Decision K 121/93, cited by Leszek Garlicki, Orzecznictwo w 1993 roku, Przeglad sadowy 31,37(1994).
22. Cindy Skach, Rethinking Judicial Review: Shaping the Toleration of Difference?, in Rethinking the Rule of Law after Communism 61 (Adam Czarnota, Martin Krygier, & WojciECH Sadurski eds., 2005).
23. Id. at 67–68.
24. Skach's argument partly resonates with Samuel Issacharoff, Fragile Democracies, 120 Harv. L. Rev. 1405 (2007).
25. Lane Scheppele, Democracy by Judiciary. Or, Why Courts can be More Democratic that Parliaments, in Rethinking the Rule of Law After Communism, Harv. L. Rev., at 25.
26. Id. at 51.
27. See Scheppele, Id.
28. Interview with Laszló Sólyom, 6 East Eur. Const. Rev. 71 (1997).
29. Shapiro, East Eur. Const. Rev., at 205.
30. See Sadurski, Rights Before Courts, East Eur. Const. Rev., at 30.
31. Brown v. Allen, 344 U.S. 443,540 (1953) (Jackson J, concurring). It should be noted, however, that Justice Jackson made this remark not in the context of the Supreme Court striking down a congressional act, but in the context of reversing a state court's decision.
32. See Alec Stone Sweet & Jud Mathews, Proportionality Balancing and Global Constitutionalism, 47 Colum. J. Transnat'l L. 73, 146–60 (2008).
33. See Wojciech Sadurski, Partnering with Strasbourg: Constitutionalization of the European Court of Human Rights, the Accession of Central and East European States to the Council of Europe, and the Idea of Pilot Judgments, 9 Hum. Rts. L. Rev. 397 (2009).
34. The first pilot judgment ever in the history of the ECtHR was Broniowski v. Poland, App. No. 31443/96,2004-V Eur. Ct. H. R., where the Court found that broad measures needed to be undertaken so as to provide a general compensation for those claimants who had been repatriated in the course of a re-drawing of Poland's borders during the Second World War.
35. The second, concerning the landlords' rights in their relations with tenants, was Hutten-Czapska v. Poland, App. No. 35014/97, 45 Eur. H.R. Rep. 4 (judgment Feb. 22, 2005) (Grand Chamber June 19, 2006) (Grand Chamber Friendly Settlement Apr. 28, 2008).
36. See Eur. H.R. Rep.
37. Laurence Heifer & Marie-Anne Slaughter, Towards a Theory of Effective Supranational Adjudication, 107 Yale L. J. 273,289 (1997).
38. Id. at 288.
39. Id. at 211.
40. Renata Uitz, Taking Courts to Court: The Story of Compliance with Strasbourg Jurisprudence in Hungary 2 (unpublished draft 2008) (on file with the author).
41. Case 11/70, Internationale Handelsgesellschaft mbH v Einfuhr- und Vorratsstelle für Getreide und Futtermittel 6 E.C.R. 1125, 1134(1970).
42. Solange I, Solange II, Maastricht decisions of the German Federal Constitutional Court, Granital and Frontini judgments of the Italian Constitutional Court, or the Maastricht decision of the Danish Supreme Court. See Paul Craig & Grainne de Búrca, EU Law: Cases and Materials (2007).
43. Wojciech Sadurski, ‘Solange, Chapter 3: Constitutional Courts in Central Europe-Democracy—European Union, 14 Eur. L. J. 1 (2008).
44. By “Solange story” I understand a tradition of resistance, by many European constitutional courts, to the supremacy of EU law over national constitutional systems on the basis that national constitutional courts are the ultimate guardians of democracy and of constitutional rights. See Sadurski, id. at 2–3.
45. The Czech Constitutional Court annulled, in its decision PL US 50/04 of Mar. 8, 2006, governmental regulations on production quotas for sugar producers on the basis that the government has exercised a competence, which had been already transferred to the European Community; for discussion, see Sadurski, id, at 6–9.
46. Louis Favoreu, La politique saisie par le droit 30 (1998).