The aim of this thesis is to explore the question of whether the Slovenian Constitutional Court is legally bound by its own decisions. In the first chapter, I distinguish two alternative conceptions of how past judicial decisions may be relevant to the decision-making of a later court. On the first account, the court is bound by a previous decision in the sense of only being permitted to depart from it when reasons of special kind or weight obtain, not whenever it deems that decision wrong. On the second view, the court has more latitude: it may always change its mind on a legal issue as long as it provides a reasonable justification for doing so. In the remainder of the thesis, I evaluate three arguments in favour of the claim that the first view most faithfully describes the attitude which the Constitutional Court legally ought to adopt towards its own decisions. The second chapter examines the possibility of grounding such an obligation in the binding nature of the decisions of the Constitutional Court. The third chapter focuses on the justification based on the Article 22 of the Constitution (equal protection of rights). The fourth chapter considers a hypothetical attempt to justify the obligation of the Constitutional Court to follow its own decisions by relying on the long-standing practices of the Court rather than on a codified legal source such as the Constitution.
|
