Konstitucinio Teismo jurisdikcijos ribos ; Limits of jurisdiction of constitutional court

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to analyse legal acts establishing the competence of Constitutional Court of Republic of Lithuania, as well to summarize the constitutional jurisprudence, which reveals the expand of boundaries of constitutional jurisdiction and to dispute main problems of competence of Constitutional Court. The paper is based on analysis of legal acts, decisions of Constitutional Court, juridical publications, articles and other sources. Constitutional Court is the institution implementing the protection of constitutional order, which ensures the supremacy of Constitution and constitutional justice. The competence of Constitutional Court is to review the compatibility of a law with the Constitution. This control includes enactments of Legislature, President and Executive organs. The Constitutional Court also decides on the compatibility of international agreements with the Constitution or the legality of elections and other. There are noticed some changes of limits of jurisdiction in the constitutional doctrine. There has been cases when the Court has decided on the conformity of legal acts with other chapters or priciples of Constitution than it was appealed. Sometimes it was analysed the constitutionality of other enactmens which were not questioned by a petitioner. Boundaries of competence were extended also by deciding on the conformity of legal acts with constitutional laws. Sometimes the object of investigation is invalid acts. Such practise of the Court provocates various discusions. One of sugestions to avoid this practise – to restrict powers of Constitutional Court by forbiding expansive interpretating of tasks and competence of Court. It is important to note that authority of the Court arise from the Constitution. The contraversial decisions of the Constitutional Court are based on interpretion and commentation, but these actions should be more motivated to avoid a violation of the Court's authority. To secure the constitutional protection in the highest level it would be favourable to establish an individual constitutional complaint and an institute of separate opinion of a judge in the constitutional system of Lithaunia, also to consider the possibility to request the European Court of Justice for preliminary decision about the meaning or validity of a particular piece of European Union law to solve the difficulties of interpretation of European Union law.