Re: National Court in Estonia
Date: Tue, 13 Jan 98 10:50:35 -0500
From: MINELRES moderator <[email protected]>
Message-Id: <[email protected]>
To: "[email protected]" <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: National Court in Estonia
From: MINELRES moderator <[email protected]>
Original sender: Andrei Arjupin <[email protected]>
Re: National Court in Estonia
Dear Boris,
In response to your questions (MINILRES 07.01.1998), I am sending the
following information:
The National Court in Estonian Republic is the highest level in the Estonian
court system. The National Court could be named also as the Supreme Court
because it reviews court judgements by way of cassation proceedings. The
National Court performs also the functions of constitutional review.
According to the Law on Legal Proceeding in Order of Constitutional Review,
the President of Republic, the Legal Chancellor and courts of first and
second instance have the right to propose to the National Court to declare a
law invalid or unconstitutional.
Getting back to amendments to the Estonian Law on Language, it should to be
mentioned that the National Court has to make decision on January, 22 1998.
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>From the moderator: Andrei, thanks for your clarification! I believe that
the problem of the opportunities to dispute an allegedly unconstitutional
legal act is of great importance in the post-Communist states, where law-
making is extremely active. The key issue, in my view, is who is entitled
the right to bring the case before the Constitutional Court. In Latvia, a
special Constitutional Court has been established, however, the list of
possible "plaintiffs" is very limited (the President, the Cabinet of
Ministers, municipalities, the Supreme Court and one third of the members of
Parliament, as far as I remember ). Thus, opposition has very little chance
to initiate the case, and some people claim that the Constitutional Court
stays idle and only takes money from the state budget. We are looking
forward to learning the Estonian National Court's judgement - isn't this the
first case when a minority-related law is considered at such level? (However
, I remember that a couple of years ago the prohibition to establish
ethnically-based political parties was declared unconstitutional in Bulgaria
, maybe somebody is aware of other precedents too?).
Boris
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