A Weapon the Government Can Control
In 2020 the degradation of the Polish Constitutional Tribunal’s position deepened. This stage of the crisis of the constitutional judiciary in Poland can be illustrated with two rulings from 2020
Articles for tag: Autoritärer Populismus, Polnischer Verfassungsgerichtshof
How to Self-Castrate
Donald Trump’s defeat at the US presidential election has wrong-footed some of his staunchest loyalists in Central and Eastern Europe. In Estonia, the former master pupil in the CEE ‘class of democracy’, the Trumpist part of the government has suffered a kind of public nervous breakdown with a set of unrestrained remarks aired on a radio talk show on 8 November about the allegedly ‘rigged elections’ in the US and the ‘corrupt character’ of the US President-Elect Joe Biden. This crassly undiplomatic spell of verbal incontinence by the prominent representatives of the Conservative People’s Party of Estonia (EKRE), including two members of the government, culminated in the resignation of the Minister of the Interior Mart Helme.
Matters of Belief
On Bill Barr's constitutional theory
Glaubensdinge
Über Bill Barrs Verfassungstheorie
Bringing a Hammer to the Chess Board
In cases where constitutional law is slowly losing its normative force, sophisticated doctrinal-conceptual systems (Verfassungsdogmatik) may even become ridiculous and, to some degree, dishonest. While showing a very few examples of doctrinal absurdities in a judgment of a captured and subservient constitutional court can be meaningful (also in order to corroborate the claim about its captured nature), writing a thorough doctrinal analysis on such a judgment is a futile, frustrating and meaningless exercise. A thorough doctrinal analysis can even legitimize the theater of legalism by taking seriously words which are not worth to be taken seriously. Judicial decisions of captured courts and doctrinal writings of pro-autocracy academics in these countries can be viewed as merely performative acts (as opposed to reasons).
Closing Loops, Unclosing Loops
On elections in Poland and Hungary and other constitutional matters of hope and despair.
A Bug, not a Feature
On empty concepts, blind spots and other matters of constitutional visibility.
Get on the Istanbul Express
The answer to authoritarian populism are uneasy alliances of different types of political forces loyal to political democracy, however difficult that may seem under quite different political circumstances.
