Constitutional review is generally regarded as one of the fundaments of the rule of law. Its beginnings can be traced back to several European countries. Nonetheless, the position individual Constitutional Courts (and similar institutions) enjoy all throughout Europe differs from country to country. The aim of this dissertation is therefore to point out both the common characteristics and the distinctions between different systems. In this dissertation, “the position” is understood through the way individual Constitutions define it – both through its positioning in the constitutional provisions, and through the explicit definition, if such a definition is provided in a specific Constitution. The first part of the dissertation deals with the principal characteristics of different models of constitutional review. This includes the classification of the models into the four core groups, and the definitions of fundamental legal terminology, necessary for understanding the following presentations of concrete examples of constitutional arrangements. In the second part, the focus is on the fundamental characteristics of the positions, occupied by the Constitutional Courts in the chosen Member States of the European Union. For a more comprehensive and coherent display these countries are divided into four groups, based on the four basic models of constitutional review.
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