Constitutional Courts in Transition. A European Perspective

In this chapter I analyze the relation between constitutional justice and transition processes. More specifically, I examine the role that constitutional courts played in Europe in the twentieth century in the transitions from an autocratic regime to a democratic form of government (with a special focus on Italy, Spain and the Czech Republic), as well as on the role that constitutional courts are currently playing in the processes of democratic backsliding in Hungary and Poland. As will be shown, in the former cases constitutional courts exercised a real “counter-majoritarian” role, thus contributing enormously to the positive outcome of the democratization processes. In the latter cases, on the contrary, constitutional courts stopped being counter-majoritarian institutions and turned into bodies supporting the majority in power. In this way, they favored the processes of democratic deterioration.