Rights Before Courts A Study of Constitutional Courts in Postcommuni
Challenging the conventional wisdom that constitutional courts are the best device that democratic systems have for the protection of individual rights, Wojciech Sadurski examines carefully the most recent wave of activist constitutional courts: those tha
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Rights Before Courts A Study of Constitutional Courts in Postcommunist States of Central and Eastern Europe By
Wojciech Sadurski European University Institute Florence, Italy and University of Sydney, Australia
A C.I.P. Catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.
ISBN 978-1-4020-6982-6 (PB) ISBN 978-1-4020-3006-2 (HB) ISBN 978-1-4020-3007-9 (e-book)
Published by Springer, P.O. Box 17, 3300 AA Dordrecht, The Netherlands. www.springer.com
Printed on acid-free paper
Cover image: © 1990 Photo SCALA, Florence, Giotto (1266-1336): Socle: Justice. Padua, Scrovegni Chapel
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PREFACE TO THE PAPER EDITION Since the hardcover edition of this book appeared back in 2005, naturally a lot of things happened as far as constitutional courts of Central and Eastern Europe are concerned: new decisions in all fields of rights adjudication covered in the book have been handed out, and if I were to write a thorough update of my studies, these new cases of the last two years would have to be included and discussed. But none of the main lines of jurisprudence have been reversed, as far as I can see it, and more importantly, none of the important structural aspects of the constitutional justice model for the CEE has been affected. So, subject to the proviso that the discussion of specific cases here covers the period of up to 2004, I do not believe that I need to revise any of my general propositions and conclusions which build on my description of the model and of the actions of constitutional courts in the region. There is one area, however, which is of great importance, which had not been included in my book, and yet has acquired considerable urgency in the last years. Since the accession in 2004 of eight countries from CEE to the European Union (Estonia, Latvia Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia, Czech Republic, Hungary and Slovenia), and of two further countries in 2007 (Romania and Bulgaria), constitutional courts in these new EU member states faced new challenges and opportunities. These countries gained the opportunity to become part of the EU legal space, and to acquire a possibility of shaping the European legal architecture as fully fledged courts of the EU law capable of applying and interpreting EU law. Nevertheless there have also been challenges to meet, they have had to grapple, among other things, with the vexed problem of the doctrine of supremacy of the EU law vis-à-vis constitutional law of their own states (at least, as understood in the doctrine of the European Court of Justice), and consequently to defend their own role an
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