Article
Beyond “unwinding”: Constitutional review strategies in consociations
This article contributes to the emerging literature on the role of constitutional courts in consociational democracies. While most works have approached the topic from the perspective of regime dynamics, this analysis focuses on how courts relate to the constitutions they are mandated to enforce. Beyond addressing the empirical question of what choices courts make in their balancing between universal values and stability, this article also investigates how courts do this balancing. Through the analysis of seven cases from two consociations, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Northern Ireland, I argue that courts embrace specific interpretive approaches (proportionality analysis, purposive interpretation, and the political question doctrine) to reconcile the ideas of constitutional supremacy and respect for political agreements. The analysis also demonstrates how—by their nature political—framework agreements establishing consociational settlements become primary reference points for interpreting constitutional documents.
There is a normative expectation that constitutionalism does not co-exist well with autocracy. How do constitutional courts then uphold their integrity under authoritarianism? In this paper, I answer this question by taking the case of the Russian Constitutional Court (RCC) and showing how court–government accommodation in the new post-third wave autocracies can be achieved by limiting the amount of information the court receives from its secretariat. It follows from a detailed analysis of case selection in the RCC that the secretariat can function as an “insulator,” protecting the Court from political and reputational risks. The two features that make this possible are its invisibility to the judges and the clerks’ specific professional culture. The research is informed by an extensive series of in-depth interviews in the RCC, and benefits from the relocation of the RCC to St. Petersburg in 2008.
The article explains why the first attempt to introduce constitutional review in Russia failed. A simple model that predicts institutional characteristics of constitutional courts is devised based on configuration of elites that create the court and their prospects of keeping power. The case of Russia is examined against this model. I explain the existent departures from the predictions of the model by the fact that while playing with the court the elites also played other games which led them to making suboptimal decisions. Making too many of those (including making the court's powers excessively large and unspecified and nominating wrong justices) caused the project's failure.
международное частное право; недвижимость; ; школа бартолистов; бартолисты; теория статутов; статуарная теория/
The article is devoted to a particular form of freedom of assembly — the right to counter-demonstrate. The author underlines the value of this right as an element of democratic society, but also acknowledges the risk of violent actions among participants of opposing demonstrations. Due to this risk, the government may adopt adequate measures restricting the right to counter-demonstrate, certain types of which are analyzed in this paper.
Development of standards of international controllability is reviewed in the article. Institutional approach is applied to development of international legal regime of Energy Charter. Definition of controllability is connected to development of international standards of dispute settlement, which are described in the article in detail. In connection with controllability, Russian interest, defense of investment in European Union and ecological investment encouragement, is reviewed in the article.
мировое управление и управляемость, Мировая экономика, международное экономическое право, энергетическая хартия, International control and controllability, International economics, international economic law, Energy Charter