The Parliament and Judicialisation of Politics: Reflection of the Czech Constitutional Court Decision-making in the Debates in the Chamber of Deputies
Abstract
The paper focuses on the influence of the Constitutional Court of the Czech Republic on legislation and parliamentary debates. The author tries to ascertain whether the MPs consider the existing case law of the Constitutional Court and the potential possibility of constitutional review when debating bills, and whether they perceive the court's case law to be binding.
In order to do so, the author analyses mentions about the Constitutional Court case law and its decision making in the debates in the Chamber of Deputies of the Czech Parliament in the election period 2013-2017 by both statistical and qualitative methods. He concludes that the MPs actively refer to the Constitutional Court in their debates and (rhetorically at least) they show great respect or even deference to the court.
They thus enable the court to influence both the content of laws and the legislative procedure.