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Legal and Extralegal Factors in Argumentation and Decision-making of the Constitutional Court of the Czech Republic
Chmel, Jan ; Tryzna, Jan (referee)
Legal and Extralegal Factors in Argumentation and Decision-making of the Constitutional Court of the Czech Republic Abstract The thesis deals with the influence of legal and extralegal factors on the decision-making of the Constitutional Court of the Czech Republic. Particularly, it focuses on the questions of which preconditions for decision-making of the Constitutional Court are created by the external political and social environment, how this decision-making reflects the different attitudes and approaches of individual judges and how it is influenced by the composition of the judicial panels. The author first summarizes a wide range of factors whose influence on court decisions has been observed. These include not only the content of legislation, but also judicial philosophy, including activism and self-restraint, and various extralegal factors observed by the attitudinal and strategic model of judicial decision-making, but also by psychological and economic studies. Subsequently, the thesis focuses on the Constitutional Court of the Czech Republic. First, it deals with the preconditions for the influence of various factors on its decision-making and argues that the Constitutional Court can be considered a strong court due to its external conditions and its own decision-making activities. Then, with the...
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Legal and Extralegal Factors in Argumentation and Decision-making of the Constitutional Court of the Czech Republic
Chmel, Jan ; Wintr, Jan (advisor) ; Tryzna, Jan (referee) ; Vyhnánek, Ladislav (referee)
Legal and Extralegal Factors in Argumentation and Decision-making of the Constitutional Court of the Czech Republic Abstract The thesis deals with the influence of legal and extralegal factors on the decision-making of the Constitutional Court of the Czech Republic. Particularly, it focuses on the questions of which preconditions for decision-making of the Constitutional Court are created by the external political and social environment, how this decision-making reflects the different attitudes and approaches of individual judges and how it is influenced by the composition of the judicial panels. The author first summarizes a wide range of factors whose influence on court decisions has been observed. These include not only the content of legislation, but also judicial philosophy, including activism and self-restraint, and various extralegal factors observed by the attitudinal and strategic model of judicial decision-making, but also by psychological and economic studies. Subsequently, the thesis focuses on the Constitutional Court of the Czech Republic. First, it deals with the preconditions for the influence of various factors on its decision-making and argues that the Constitutional Court can be considered a strong court due to its external conditions and its own decision-making activities. Then, with the...
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The Political Character of Constitutional Review
Juhás, Juraj ; Gerloch, Aleš (advisor) ; Kosař, David (referee) ; Kühn, Zdeněk (referee)
in the English language: The Political Character of Constitutional Review. In this thesis, we tried to find out whether constitutional review in the Czech Republic has at least partially a political character. In the Czech Republic, constitutional review is exercised by the Constitutional Court in two types of proceedings: (a) proceedings on derogation of statutes and other regulations (laws) and (b) proceedings on constitutional complaints against decisions or other interferences of public authorities in constitutionally guaranteed fundamental rights or freedoms. In proceedings on derogation of laws, we found that judicial decision-making behaviour has at least partially a political character. The reason is, in particular, that (a) judges decide in favour of proposals for derogation of laws filed by legislators (deputies or senators) of the same political affiliation as the judges' appointing president more often than when the legislator's political affiliation is the opposite; (b) ideological assessment of the analysed decisions shows that ideological aspects of the decision-making of judges significantly correlate with the presumed ideology of their appointing president. Moreover, the differences in judicial activism are smaller than the differences between legislators of opposite political...
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Judicial self-restraint in the judicature of the Constitutional Court of the Czech Republic
Skořepa, Petr ; Kindlová, Miluše (advisor) ; Suchánek, Radovan (referee)
Judicial self-restraint in the judicature of the Constitutional Court of the Czech Republic Abstract The thesis deals with the role of the judicial self-restraint in the judicature of the Constitutional Court of the Czech Republic. Besides the theoretical definitions is the pivotal part of the thesis practical section that is focused on the analysis of pre-selected decisions of the Constitutional Court with respect to the judicial self-restraint. The first chapter contains definition of the theory of separation of powers as basis for the judicial self-restraint and its subcategories. Part of this chapter is oriented at the judicial power itself, which is crucial for the thesis. The second chapter provides definitions of key concepts - principal of judicial self-restraint, priority of the constitutionally conformal interpretation, political question doctrine and judicial activism, as it is called. These concepts are defined from the points of view of the angloamerican legal system as well as czech legal system. In the second chapter are also stated possible factors that may lead to the judicial activism and to the judiciary state, as it is called. The chapter afterwards describes the judicial interpretation and application of law in the context of the judicial self-restraint and provides relevant historical...
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An Analysis of Functions of Human Dignity in Constitutional Law with Focus on Case Law of Czech Constitutional Court
Horák, Filip ; Grinc, Jan (referee)
After the concept of human dignity has spread into a large number of constitutions from all over the world, detailed examination of this phenomenon is steadily gaining importance. This thesis finds three autonomous approaches to human dignity in constitutional law, namely a subjective human right, the source of human rights and an objective constitutional value. Each of these approaches is based on a particular historical view on human dignity. The key argument of this thesis states that the connection of the three aforementioned legitimate approaches leads to the creation of dangerous and undesirable hybrid forms of human dignity. These forms tend to be axiomatic, preventing from the rational legal argumentation as well as from the use of the proportionality principle. The implementation of the concept of human dignity in such an axiomatic way is an argumentative foul, unfortunately so frequently made by both judiciary and doctrines. The thesis further focuses on the examination of the axiomatic human dignity phenomenon with respect to the Constitutional Court of the Czech Republic decision-making specifically. Using quantitative methods, it first comes to the conclusion that the problem of axiomatic human dignity-related argumentation does not only exist in the Constitutional Court's...
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An Analysis of Functions of Human Dignity in Constitutional Law with Focus on Case Law of Czech Constitutional Court
Horák, Filip ; Antoš, Marek (advisor) ; Hofmannová, Helena (referee)
After the concept of human dignity has spread into a large number of constitutions from all over the world, detailed examination of this phenomenon is steadily gaining importance. This thesis finds three autonomous approaches to human dignity in constitutional law, namely a subjective human right, the source of human rights and an objective constitutional value. Each of these approaches is based on a particular historical view on human dignity. The key argument of this thesis states that the connection of the three aforementioned legitimate approaches leads to the creation of dangerous and undesirable hybrid forms of human dignity. These forms tend to be axiomatic, preventing from the rational legal argumentation as well as from the use of the proportionality principle. The implementation of the concept of human dignity in such an axiomatic way is an argumentative foul, unfortunately so frequently made by both judiciary and doctrines. The thesis further focuses on the examination of the axiomatic human dignity phenomenon with respect to the Constitutional Court of the Czech Republic decision-making specifically. Using quantitative methods, it first comes to the conclusion that the problem of axiomatic human dignity-related argumentation does not only exist in the Constitutional Court's...
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Methodology of legal interpretation in the case law of the Constitutional Court of the CR
Kadlec, Ondřej ; Kühn, Zdeněk (advisor) ; Tryzna, Jan (referee)
1 This paper consists of two different parts. The first part is theoretical and descriptive and its three chapters are organized deductively. The second part analyses a methodology of interpretation of the Constitutional court of the Czech Republic. The first chapter concerns with important legal concepts such as law certainty, predictability of courts' decisions, justice and equality. It concludes that a methodology of interpretation plays a crucial role in all of these concepts. Next chapter examines such terms as application of law, interpretation of law, law argumentation and methodology of interpretation. The last chapter of the descriptive part presents two judicial strategies to interpretation. Judges in the first strategy use only internal law arguments (mainly text of the statutes) as opposite to the second strategy where judges do not rely on the text at all, but interpret the law with external law arguments (such as intent, unexpressed law principle, economical argument etc.). This chapter also briefly describes the most common methods of legal interpretation for every judicial strategy. Eventually this part tries to provide modern strategy which combines methods used by both strategies and is based on rational, full and open explanation of court decisions. Afterwards the paper shifts the focus...
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