Suchergebnisse

Political parties are an indispensable factor in any modern parliamentary democracy. It would be impossible to parliamentary democracy to function properly without them. Political parties are a constitutional category and they have to act in accordance with constitution, but due to their importance it is already observed that sometimes they go beyond constitution. Each country should find its own way in order to face that challenge. Germany is a good example for that, by giving political parties the freedom to act on the basis of the provisions of the Basic Law, but with the care that the entire system does not endanger itself. That could be seen in three examples. First example is the relationship between the parliamentary group as the emanation of political parties in parliament and deputies. Second example is banning of anti-constitutional political parties. Third example is the election process of judges of the Constitutional Court. The paper concludes that it is necessary to find an ideal formula for the freedom of their actions, according to which political parties are allowed to perform any action that is beneficial to the constitutional order, while not all of them are forbidden, but only the actions that have a devastating effect on the system as a whole.

Using the contemporary system theories, the author primarily points to the asymmetry of the constitutional law and the political processes it so rarely regulates. Then he goes on to analyse the historical process of separating the custom law, oral law and written law, of the court and the courtroom, the law and the constitution, the constitution and its interpretation, the constitution's interpretation and the constitutional theory, and concludes his study with a description of the difference between constitution and democracy in the postmodern categorial optics. (SOI : PM: S. 45)

The author analyses the relationship between the constitutional law and the political reality. Using the historical material of the German constitutional legal practice to analyze this relationship, the author concludes that a good constitution can function solely in the setting of a good political culture of state's citizens. Citizenry of a certain political culture always goes hand in hand with a good constitution. (SOI : PM: S. 148)

Häberle claims constitutional law is a comparative experiential science closely linked with political science with which it shares the research subject. The constitutional state has been going through a permanent process of changes; the central question is who is the prime mover of constitutional changes: constitutional/legal institutions, constitutional/lega science and political science or public opinion and political culture of citizens? By analysing the recent history of the changes of the German constitutions he suggests that all these factors contribute to constitutional changes. Nevertheless, as an expert for law and political science, who considers himself as belonging to the wider European scientific community, Häberle thinks that the decisive influences in constitutional changes stem from legal and political sciences and concludes: Sine qua (scientia) mortalium vita non regitur liberaliter. (Without science, mortals do not command their life freely). (SOI : PM: S. 186)

The maxim that the people is the agent of the constituent power has, since the French revolution, been a universally accepted answer to the issue of the origin and the degree of validity of constitutional law which, as the ultimate norm of a state's legal order has no other higher positive law norm. But that maxim disregards political reality. Neither is it convincing from the point of view of the theory of state. The people is not the subject of activity but onl of reference. The maxim on the constituent power of the people is a democratic myth. As such it is polyvalent: the reinforcement of revolution or its prohibition determine whether the existing constitutional regime is to be overthrown or legitimised. The doctrine of the constituent power of the people is not cognitively rewarding as a theory of legitimation, either, since the effectiveness of a constitution does not depend on its provenance but on the reception it gets here and now from its addressees: state agencies and citizens. (SOI : PM: S. 63)

The author analyses Schmitt's and Luhmann's theory of democracy and the constitutional state. By comparing them, he concludes that Schmitt's critique of the democratic pluralistic state has ended in the theory of direct or plebiscitary democracy in which the constitution is subject to an unpredictable will of political majority which can change it wilfully in line with the power relations. Luhmann, on the other hand, starts from the assumption of the separation between law and politics and builds his concept of the constitutional state on the bipolar differentiation and the mutual checks between law and politics. The author concludes that Luhmann does not give up on Hobbes' pessimistic conviction that human nature is bestial; he only offers a different strategy for the coexistence of cultured savages. (SOI : PM: S. 67)

When in 2007, after the rejection of the Constitution for Europe in France and the Netherlands, European politicians defined their mandate to work on the Reform Treaty, they explicitly promised that 'the constitutional concept is . abandoned' and that 'the Treaty of European Union and Treaty on Functioning of the Union will not have a constitutional character.' In its Maastricht and Lisbon decisions, the German Federal Constitutional Court concluded that the European Union did not have a constitution since it did not have demos. The main purpose of this article is to prove the opposite. Accepting Weiler's argumentation that the EU is a political messianic venture par excellence, the author claims that, in addition to pursuing messianic goals, Europe's political elite has for a long time been streaming to root Political Messianism into democracy and position the EU in the global world. The main vehicle to transform the Community/Union from an international to a constitutional legal order has been constitutionalism. Starting from the French revolutionary Declaration, which declared civil rights and in Article 16 proclaimed 'a society in which the observance of the law is not assured, nor the separation of powers defined, has no constitution at all,' the author has showed that the Union has an antirevolutionary, uncodified and evolutive constitution, whose elements are to be found in the Lisbon Treaty and its related documents, the jurisprudence of the European Court of Justice, and to some extent in the constitutional orders of the Member States. The European constitution does not mirror a national constitution in the sense that it is attributable to the people, nor it is a revolutionary product aimed at limiting the government in the name of individual freedom. It is a rule of law-oriented type of constitution, born in the process of constitutionalization and aimed at submitting public power to law on the Union level. From the perspective of modern constitutionalism, the quality of this constitution is a matter of concern, since it has managed to connect the rule of law with the protection of human rights, but has failed to do the same with regard to democracy. Despite some efforts to entrench the democratic principle in the Lisbon Treaty, the present crisis in the Union is to a great extent the result of this failure. The fact that democratic defects at the Union level appear less visible when pitted against the state of affairs in national constitutional systems cannot mitigate this failure. Yet, assuming that the EU will survive the present crisis and having in mind that the Union is 'work in progress', the issue which still remains open is whether the future efforts to eliminate the defects of the European Constitution should be tied to traditional ways of thinking about democratic accountability within nation states, or one should stop thinking in terms of a Westphalian nation-state, and accept that transnational systems can provide a cure for democratic failings in ways that differ from traditional postulates of democracy.