Decisions of supreme courts are a matter of debate in numerous countries from USA to Russia.

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ANKARA- Debates around the Constitutional Court, one of the top priority agenda items recently, are not unique to Turkey. "Frictions" between the ruling parties and supreme courts surface in other countries of the world as well. Similar debates first emerged in the USA. Some of these frictions result in the expansion of the room of maneuver of the constitutional court, while some others lead to the suspension of the operations of the court.

TEPAV started to publish a paper series titled 'Constitutional Studies' with a view to facilitate the communication with the civil society and the public around the issue of constitutional issues, which occupy Turkey's agenda recently. The first paper in the series is titled "Checks and Balances on Political Power and Constitutions."

The paper, authored by Dr. Levent Gönenç, Associate Professor in Ankara University Law School addresses the following themes: Constitutional State Principle and Checks and Balances on Political Power, Principle of Separation of Powers and Checks and Balances on Political Power, Checks and Balances Mechanisms Stemming from the Nature and the Functioning of the Democratic Regime, and International Review Mechanisms. In this context, constitutional courts also feature among the issues addressed in the text.

The study states that when Franklin D. Roosevelt attempted a series of serious economic reforms in order to eliminate the devastating effects of the Great Depression of 1930, the conflicts with the U.S. Supreme Court, which opposed to the reform initiatives, occupied the agenda for a long time in the country. Ground-breaking jurisprudence by the Federal Supreme Court of the USA and reactions against these still prevail.

In the section "Tensions between Constitutional Courts and Political Power in Hungary and Russia", the study says: "following its establishment, the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation under the chairmanship of Valery Zor'kin, found itself in a bitter battle with the political power, which tried to reestablish the authoritarian tradition of Russia particularly within the confines of the legislative body." The study continues:

"In a political climate where the legislative body is completely suppressed and all the authorities are collected at the hands of the executive body, the Court, in the words of Chair Zor'kin, refused to 'act like firefighters who are called to duty after nothing but smoking ashes remain' and transformed into a body that gives strong political messages with the aim to defend constitutional regime. The tension between President Boris Yeltsin and the Constitutional Court was so heightened at some point that 13 judges of the court were invited to a private meeting by the President Yeltsin to "test their loyalty." 6 judges that participated in the meeting, which was ignored by the majority of the judges, remained silent about the content of the meeting, which in turn was taken as a strong signal of the possible unlawfulness of Yeltsin's 'recommendations'.

The legal existence of the Constitutional Court, which produced a number of 'tough' decisions over this period, was finally suspended by the No 1612 Presidential Decree signed by President Yeltsin in 1993. With the Constitutional Court reorganized with the chairmanship of Vladimir Tumanov in 1994, a new era dominated by a more limited legal activism began."

As the study reveals, Hungary was another country that witnessed severe tensions between political powers and the constitutional court. "In Hungary where the Constitutional Court was equipped with vast authorities, the performance of the Supreme Court was shocking for political elites. The Constitution Court, which cancelled in average one third of the laws adopted by the Parliament, put its signature under many decisions that received reaction from politicians and the public, from death penalty to land reform. Some decisions of the Court led to long-lasting tensions that gave way to protest meetings in Budapest by 'Hungarian Democratic Forum', partner of the ruling party."

The study by Dr. Gönenç states that a different development in this field was observed in France. With the adoption of the Law on the Amendment of Constitution in 2008 in France, 33 out of 89 articles of the 1958 Constitution were amended dramatically. An amendment among these was related to the restructuring of the Constitutional Council. The study stresses:

"Originally, the Constitutional Council of France was authorized only to carry out an abstract, a priori inspection before the laws took effect, and upon the application of certain political bodies. This principle remained intact though in time the Council exerted its dominance in the system through jurisprudence and earned a significant reputation. With this final amendment however, the authority of the Constitutional Council to inspect the conformity of laws with the constitution was transformed into an a posteriori inspection, i.e. one carried out after the laws came into effect, and one mobilized to resolve concrete unconformities.

This new system resembles the 'concrete review of norms' as in the constitutional review system of the Republic of Turkey; or put differently, to the system of 'claiming of unconstitutionality in other courts' as regulated by the Article 152 of the Constitution.

This amendment adopted in French constitutional system is interpreted by some as the official approval of the 'legal revolution' that the Council made in 1971, importing a fundamental rights term into the Constitution 40 years belatedly."