Learning objectives
The main objective of the course is to inform students about the constitutional aspects of contemporary constitutional transitions, especially in the post-communist world; about the general analytical framework of comparative constitutionalism, and about the forms and sources of populist, anti-democratic challenges to democratic constitutionalism and the rule of law.
Prerequisites
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Course unit content
This course will address the role that constitutions and constitutional courts have played in the “transitional democracies:, i.e. states which emerge from the fall of authoritarian systems, with special emphasis on post-communist states of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) after the fall of Communism. It is generally (and rightly) thought that the emergence of these courts have been one of the most significant institutional phenomena of “transitional democracy” in these countries. The course will attempt to identify the main institutional parameters of this development (taking into account both the common factors and the differences among different post-communist states of the region), to analyse the main contributions that these courts have made to the development of law in these countries, and to assess their overall impact on the democratic process. The approach will be both theoretical (by identifying the relations between the behaviour of these courts and the general democratic political and legal theory) and comparative (by not only insisting on the differences among the Central European constitutional courts themselves but also by placing them against the background of the main trends in judicial review in the contemporary world). It will focus, in particular, on the ways that legal integration with the European Union affected the patterns of constitutional justice in post-communist states.
In the second half of the course it will focus on recent developments of “democratic backsliding”: the decline in constitutional and democratic standards in countries such as Hungary and Poland. The causes and manifestations of the backlash will be discussed, with special emphasis on Poland. The main threats to political liberties and democratic governance are identified as “populism”, “competitive authoritarianism”, or “illiberal democracy”. The course will look at these issues through the lense of comparative constitutional law, and while a number of different concepts and issues will be canvassed during the course, two themes of special attention will be: (1) activist constitutional (and supreme) courts as putative bulwarks of resistance to illiberal authoritarianism, and (2) the measures of so-called “militant democracy” (restrictions of political rights for anti-democratic forces). In the end, the possible remedies to the crisis, especially through legal and political resources available to the European Union, will be discussed
Full programme
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Bibliography
Wojciech Sadurski, Poland’s Constitutional Breakdown, Oxford University Press 2019, available as hardback or EBook from OUP web-page or from Amazon. Students can obtain 30 discount by using a special discount code ALAUTHC4 only at OUP website https://global.oup.com/academic/product/polands-constitutional-breakdown-9780198840503?cc=de&lang=en&
Teaching methods
The course will be delivered through a mixture of the exposition by the lecturer and a class discussion based on the recommended readings. Students will be asked to read certain texts in advance (especially, sections of the book Poland’s Constitutional Breakdown) and the lecturer will refer to these texts in the class discussions.
Assessment methods and criteria
Immediately at the end of the course there will be a written exam. It will have a form of a 6-hours take-home examination, on 20 November at 10:00. Students will have to write essays which answer to two questions which they will be able to choose out of a list of three questions.
These two answers should not exceed 6 pages in total (approximately 3 pages per answer). The questions will concern selected issues from the total materials covered by the course. The answers should have a critical and reflective character rather than purely descriptive. During the course, the instructor will provide orally more specific guidelines for approaching the exam.
Other information
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