On the problem of the organizational legal form concept in administration of constitutional justice

The concept of organizational legal form in administration of constitutional justice includes: firstly, the mechanism of judicial constitutional control as one of the forms of state authorities' activities aimed at the safeguard of the Constitution; secondly, the organizational and functional formation of a specialized body of constitutional control by national legislation. In the first case the application of the concept is connected with the theory of a law-abiding state where the principle of separation of powers and the system of checks and balances imply the obligatory specialized constitutional control as part of total control by the state. This is a special function of the state (to conduct a judicial constitutional control) which shall be realized by organizing the system of state bodies and establishing the authority by law of some state bodies which were defined by law to exercise constitutional control in a formalized court procedure by legal means. The above concept is used to understand the inner organization and legal foundations of activity and represents the set of: a) procedural norms which establish the sequence of actions in relation to the category of constitutional cases to be heard; b) organizational forms of the court work: plenary court sessions or panel sittings of judges (chambers, senates, sections, etc.) and structural subdivisions (supportive bodies) of courts involved in administration of justice. In this sense the application of the concept is connected with practical realization of the ideas of constitutionalism in national state legal structure of society and it is used much rarely. The comparison of national bodies representing different models of constitutional control usually results in the conclusion about conformity of the type of specialized constitutional control with the mode of conducting of constitutional control in a particular country and correlation of organizational legal form of constitutional justice in the country with the earlier known model of constitutional control. The convergence of main systems (models) of specialized constitutional control can be explained by objective integration processes in legal systems. Some procedures and types of control, being characteristics of constitutional justice, "penetrate" into the specialized bodies of non-judicial (quasi-judicial) character and the procedural differences between the bodies of specialized judicial and quasi-judicial control seem to be less visible. That is why the concept of organizational legal form of exercising constitutional control can be applied not only to the bodies of constitutional justice. In each case the concept of the organizational legal form of exercising constitutional justice expresses the essence of the same legal phenomenon i.e. the organization of judicial constitutional control. The second "reading" of the concept is understood as the concretization of the first one and indicates a special manifestation of the general. The unified concept needs to be considered from various aspects and its application by the bodies of constitutional control is necessary for comparative constitutional research.

Keywords

Authors

References