Types of Discourse in the Czech Constitutional Court's Decision-making on Reform Laws in the Context of Judicialization of Politics Judicialization of Politics
Abstract
The article focuses on discourses that the Constitutional Court uses in the rulings on the laws that the government calls "reform". It examines this question in the case of the Constitutional Court's decisions that dealt with the reforms of the centre-right cabinets between the years 2007 and 2013, specifically those concerned with social rights.
Since this issue is to a substantial extent political, the article uses the concept of judicialization of politics while studying the rulings. The first half of the article looks at the phenomenon of judicialization of politics from both theoretical and more particular and historical point of view.
The second half analyses how the Constitutional Court works with the concept of reform or reform law, and then outlines three possible approaches of the Constitutional Court to issues that are described by the government as important reformist projects. These approaches were called "democratization", expertization, and judicialization; and the preference of one of them can show us a possible shift towards more procedural, or the other way around substantive, conception of democracy.
