Constitutional court

This article is a list of constitutional courts. For information about constitutional courts in general, see Constitution
Austrian Constitutional Court (Verfassungsgerichtshof VfGH), the oldest constitutional Court in the world, resided in the building of the former Böhmische Hofkanzlei (English: Czech Chancellery), Judenplatz 11 in Vienna until 2012
Hall for plenary sessions of the Constitutional Court of the Czech Republic in the building of the former Moravian Parliament in Brno
Bundesverfassungsgericht (BVerfG) in Karlsruhe

A constitutional court is a high court that deals primarily with constitutional law. Its main authority is to rule on whether laws that are challenged are in fact unconstitutional, i.e., whether they conflict 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 their 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 (Marbury v. Madison), even though it is not a separate constitutional court.

The First Austrian Republic, in 1919, established the first dedicated Constitutional Court, which however existed in name only until 10 October 1920, when the country's new constitution came into effect, upon which the court gained the power to review the laws of Austria's federal states.[1] The Czechoslovakian Constitution of 1920, which came into effect on 2 February 1920, was the first to provide for a dedicated court for judicial review of parliamentary laws, but the court did not convene until November 1921. Before that, only the United States, Canada and Australia had adopted the concept of judicial review by their supreme courts following shared principles of their similar common law legal systems, which they, in turn, had inherited from British legal practice. (The United Kingdom itself does not have a codified constitution to be reviewed by such a court.)

The Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation, established in 1991.

List

Countries with separate constitutional courts include:

See also

Footnotes

  1. ↑ Constitutional Court of Austria - History
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