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The Illiberal Abuse of Constitutional Courts in Europe

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 May 2019

Pablo Castillo-Ortiz
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Abstract

Legal constitutionalism – Political constitutionalism – Emergence of illiberal constitutionalism as a tertium genus – Examination of constitutional courts under three illiberal governments: Poland, Hungary, and Turkey – Illiberal governments’ strategies to seize control of constitutional courts – Illiberal governments’ aim to secure leverage over constitutional judges and restrict the powers of review of the court – Constitutional courts under illiberal rule invert the traditional functions that were assigned to them under the original Kelsenian approach – Instead of a check on power, illiberal constitutional courts become a device to circumvent constitutional constraints and concentrate power in the hands of the ruling actors.

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Articles
Information
European Constitutional Law Review , Volume 15 , Issue 1 , March 2019 , pp. 48 - 72
Copyright
© 2019 The Authors 

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Footnotes

*

Pablo Castillo-Ortiz, Lecturer in Law, University of Sheffield – The School of Law. This paper was presented at the Workshop ‘The Liberal Order in Crisis’ at the Europa-Universität Viadrina. I want to thank all the participants, and specially Cas Mudde, who participated as discussant, for their feedback on the paper. I also want to thank Wojciech Sadurski, Graham Gee, Maria Haimerl, and two anonymous reviewers for comments on an earlier draft of this article. All mistakes and omissions are the sole responsibility of the author.

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