Developments in the Constitutional Review: Constitutional Court between the Status of Negative Legislator and the Status of Positive Co-Legislator
Perspectives of Business Law Journal, Vol. I, Issue1
17 Pages Posted: 29 Jun 2013
Date Written: November 23, 2012
Abstract
The study wants to emphasize that Constitutional Courts belonging to the European model depart from their traditional role as “negative legislator” – which refers to the effect of their acts consisting in removal from the legal system of those rules contrary to the Basic Law – becoming, to a certain extent, a “positive legislator”, official interpreter of the Constitution, revealing the content of constitutional and even infraconstitutional rules in their case-law, whose effects are nothing but specific forms of “impulse” or “coercion” of the legislator to proceed in a certain sense, and whose continuous development guides the evolution of the entire legal system. Case-law selected presents ways in which the Constitutional Court of Romania is associated to law-making activity. Without minimizing in any way its traditional role as “negative legislator”, the study refers mainly to acts and situations that give expression to the creative role of the Constitutional Court of Romania.
Keywords: Constitutional Court, co-legislator, law-making activity, constitutional review
JEL Classification: K40
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation