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Constitutional Courts: Supreme Courts

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Writing Constitutions

Abstract

This chapter summarizes current a modern constitutional design regarding Constitutional and Supreme Courts. It is based on the review of national constitutions and seeks to establish a common ground for writing and amending constitutions. It provides an overview of the structure of constitutional jurisdictions, judges, their nomination, selection and duration of office as well as their independence. It further reviews the competences of the Constitutional and Supreme Courts such as the retroactive and presentive control, the diffuse and centralized judicial review of norms and individual complaints. The chapter also reviews the conflict of competences, the control of elections and the duty to protect the constitution and the prohibition of political parties and forms part of Vol. I of Writing Constitutions.

An introductory video can be found on www.writingconstitutions.com and on https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-94602-9_1.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Montesquieu, 2017 [1748], De l’esprit des lois, livre IX, chapter 4, 6; Locke (1689), Two Treatises of Government; Hamilton et al. (1787/1788), Federalist Papers.

  2. 2.

    See infra.

  3. 3.

    See e.g. Title IV ItConst: Judiciary (art. 101–113), Title VI: Constitutional Guarantees, sec. I: Constitutional Court (“Corte Costituzionale”: art. 134–137); similar Title VI SpConst: Judiciary (“Poder Judicial”: art. 117-127); Title IX: Constitutional Court (“Tribunal Constitucional”) or Title VII French Const “Conseil Constitutionnel” in contrast to Title VIII (“l’autorité judiciaire”) and Title IX (“Haute Cour de Justice”).

  4. 4.

    See Starck & Weber (2007), p. 328s.

  5. 5.

    The distinction of a subjective litigation on behalf of private persons and an objective control between state organs in our view is not sufficient to give up the established classification originally introduced by Cappelletti; see to the contrary Fromont (1996), p. 43.

  6. 6.

    South East Asia saw a spike in new Constitutional Review early in the twenty-first century. Namely the “Constitutional Council” in Cambodia (1998) and the “Constitutional Tribunal in Myanmar” (2011), but also constitutional court in Thailand (1997) and Indonesia (2003), Dressel and Bünte (2014), p. 22.

  7. 7.

    Germany (art. 93 BL); Norway (art. 89 Norvegian Const); Poland (artt. 188ss. Polish Const); Slovakia (artt. 124ss. Slovak Const); Czech Republic (4th chapt., artt. 84ss.).

  8. 8.

    Russia (chapt. 7, artt. 118ss. Russian Const), Georgia (artt. 83, 88ss. Georgian Const 2010); Armenia (art. 93 Armenian Const); Turkey (artt. 146ss. TurkC of 16/4/2017 – referendum).

  9. 9.

    Costa Rica (Title I Law No. 778/1997, art. 57: “sala constitucional”); Panama (art. 203 Pananma Const); El Salvador (chapt. II, art. 183 Const of El Salvador: “sala de lo constitucional”), Bolivia (chapt. III, sec. 2, art. 262 Bolivian Const).

  10. 10.

    Tunisia (chapt. V, sec. II: “du pouvoir juridictionnel”, art. 118ss. Tunesian Const 2015).

  11. 11.

    Judicial Yuan: artt. 77, 78 Chinese Const; artt. 30, 43, 75 Local Government Act.

  12. 12.

    Dyevre discusses the development from the constitutional court as an agent to a trustee, Dyevre (2015), pp. 30–60.

  13. 13.

    For the different models see also Harding and Leyland (2009), Constitutional Courts: A comparative study.

  14. 14.

    Venice Commission (2005), § 14b.

  15. 15.

    Venice Commission (1997).

  16. 16.

    It is noted with concern that the draft Constitutional Amendment Bill 2020 of Samoa effectively envisages the abolishment of the superiority of the Supreme Court of Samoa and allows for an easier removal of its judges.

  17. 17.

    For more detail in particular with respect to Latin America see: Brink and Blass (2017), pp. 296–331.

  18. 18.

    As e.g. implemented unter President Orbán in Hungary by increasing the number from 8 to 15, however rejected by the US-Congress in 1937 when President Roosevelt suggested an extension of the Court to 15 judges, Levitsky and Ziblatt (2018), pp. 135ss.

  19. 19.

    For the establishment of the UK Supreme Court and appointment of judges see: Delaney (2016), pp. 752–768.

  20. 20.

    E.g. Germany: 3 federal judges out of 12 constitutional judges.

  21. 21.

    Judicial independence may be argued as an “intrinsic good” and is not instrumental to a given end; see MacDonald/Kong (2012), p. 838; for further reading Russel and O’Brien (eds.) (2001), Judicial Independence in the Age of Democracy, pp. 1ss.

  22. 22.

    In this respect see the monitoring of the Venice Commission referring to the modified rules of the LCC in Poland, Venice Commission (2016), § 95.

  23. 23.

    Points out that judges in England & Wales are ordinarily appointed out of an elitist group of senior barristers, who have already proven to be capable to serve in the position.

  24. 24.

    A politicization of the judiciary argues Chang (2019), p. 456.

  25. 25.

    Venice Commission (1997), p. 10: “a distinction should be made between the desire for a certain diversity and the creation of quotas in order to allow certain professions or minority groups to be represented in the court”.

  26. 26.

    “The option of reelection may undermine the independence of a judge. Nevertheless, the possibility of only one further appointment following a long term also appears favorable to allow for the continuing service of excellent judges”, but stressed that non-renewability increases the independence of a Constitutional Court judge; Venice Commission (2016), p. 14.

  27. 27.

    Starck & Weber (2007), p. 323.

  28. 28.

    Luchterhandt (2007), p. 303.

  29. 29.

    Art. 4 LCC.

  30. 30.

    E.g. Italy, Spain, France; see Starck & Weber (2007), p. 323; Luchterhandt (2007), p. 303.

  31. 31.

    E.g. France; Spain.

  32. 32.

    E.g. Germany.

  33. 33.

    More details and a review of authoritarian mechanisms in Bugarič (2015), pp. 219–255.

  34. 34.

    Venice Commission (2017), CDL-AD (2017)031-e; ECJ, C-619/18 No77ss.

  35. 35.

    See Venice Commission (1997), p. 21.

  36. 36.

    See art. 31 lit. a (1).

  37. 37.

    Art. 28 lit. a LCC 2016: see Venice Commission (2016).

  38. 38.

    “The rules of incompatibility should be rather strict in order to withdraw the judge from any influence which might be exerted via his/her out-of-court-activities”; Venice Commission (1997), p. 21.

  39. 39.

    Different however remarkably in Indonesia, where the President’s reguations are at least de facto not subject to judicial oversight, which becomes particularly apparent in the field of energy policy and leads to a dual constitutionalism.

  40. 40.

    If one does not quantify the number of Francophone courts in Africa following the French model of preventive control.

  41. 41.

    Capelletti (1970), pp. 1021ss.

  42. 42.

    Gough (1955), Fundamental Law in English Constitutional History, p. 32.

  43. 43.

    Corwin (1928), pp. 347ss.

  44. 44.

    “We the people of the US … do obtain and establish this constitution for the United States of America”.

  45. 45.

    See Starck and Weber (2007), p. 18.

  46. 46.

    See Chang et al. (2014), pp. 308ss.

  47. 47.

    Opinion sur les attributions et l’organisation du jury constitutionnaire propose le 2 thermidor, l’an 3 de la République (1795).

  48. 48.

    Merkl (1923), p. 123; Kelsen (1960), pp. 228ss.

  49. 49.

    The “concrete review” cases were significantly higher in the period from 1983 to 2005 than the “abstract norm control” cases.

  50. 50.

    “Akzessorische Prüfung”; see BGE128 I, pp. 102, 105.

  51. 51.

    Auer (1983), No. 100.

  52. 52.

    Chang et al. (2014), p. 308.

  53. 53.

    Zang (1997), pp. 1ss; Weber, ib., pp. 237ss.

  54. 54.

    See e.g. Luchterhandt (2007), p. 328.

  55. 55.

    The author has named this the “original” and “derived individual” complaint procedure; see Starck & Weber (2007), p. 349.

  56. 56.

    See for LCC in Germany; ECHR.

  57. 57.

    For recent developments in Canada and the arbitrating role of the judiciary see: Schertzer (2017), pp. 110ss.

  58. 58.

    USA: Mc Culloch v. Maryland,17 U.S.316, 405 sq. (1819); Starck & Weber (2007), p. 329.

  59. 59.

    In Germany it was part of the “Staatsgerichtsbarkeit” of the Länder in the nineteenth century but was not introduced on the federal level before the Basic Law.

  60. 60.

    Heemann et al. (2018), p. 139 point out the important role that constitutional courts in West Africa play in monitoring elections.

  61. 61.

    In the Ukraine e.g. then President Kuchma pushed for the adoption of constitutional changes by popular vote and also the dismissal of Parliament in 2000 by means of a referendum, but the Constitutional Court did not allow this question to proceed as it violated the Ukrainian constitution; Gallina (2016), p. 502.

  62. 62.

    Starck & Weber (2007), p. 357 with further references.

  63. 63.

    For the impeachment procedures see in more detail Sect 9.2 in this book (fn 3: Impeachment procedures were only initiated against four Presidents (Andrew Johnson, Richard Nixon, Bill Clinton and Donald Trump).

  64. 64.

    Art. 142 par. 2 lit. a–d B-VG.

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    Albrecht Weber

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Weber, A. (2022). Constitutional Courts: Supreme Courts. In: Writing Constitutions. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-94602-9_11

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