List of constitutional courts
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- This article is a list of constitutional courts. For information about constitutional courts in general, see Constitution.
A Constitutional Court is a high court found in many countries which deals primarily with constitutional law. Its main authority is to rule on whether or not challenged laws are in fact unconstitutional, and conflicting with constitutionally established rights and freedoms.
The list in this article is of countries that have a separate constitutional court. Many countries do not have separate constitutional courts, but instead delegate constitutional judicial authority to the supreme court. Nonetheless, such courts are sometimes also called "constitutional courts"; for example, some have called the Supreme Court of the United States "the world's oldest constitutional court" because it was the first court in the world to invalidate a law as unconstitutional (in Marbury v. Madison), even though it is not a separate constitutional court. Austria established the world's first separate constitutional court in 1920 (though it was suspended, along with the constitution that created it, from 1934 to 1945); before that, only the U.S. and Australia had adopted the concept of judicial review through their supreme courts.
Countries with separate constitutional courts include:
- Albania
- Armenia
- Austria, the country which first used this model (see Constitution of Austria)
- Azerbaijan
- Belarus
- Belgium, (see Court of Arbitration of Belgium)
- Bosnia and Herzegovina
- Bulgaria
- Central African Republic
- Chile
- Colombia
- Croatia, (see Croatian Constitutional Court)
- Czech Republic
- Egypt, (see Supreme Constitutional Court of Egypt)
- France
- Georgia
- Germany, (see Federal Constitutional Court of Germany)
- Greece
- Guatemala
- Hungary
- Italy
- Kazakhstan
- Kyrgyzstan
- Latvia
- Lithuania
- Macedonia
- Madagascar
- Moldova
- Mongolia
- Poland
- Portugal, (see Portuguese Constitutional Court)
- Romania, (see Constitutional Court of Romania)
- Russia, (see Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation)
- Serbia
- Slovakia
- Slovenia
- South Africa, (see Constitutional Court of South Africa)
- South Korea, (see Constitutional Court of South Korea)
- Spain, (see Constitutional Court of Spain)
- Tajikistan
- Thailand, (see Constitutional Court of Thailand)
- Turkey, (see Constitutional Court of Turkey)
- Turkmenistan
- Uganda
- Ukraine
- Uzbekistan