Publication details
Soužití demokracie a konstitucionalismu: teoretická východiska a česká praxe
| Title in English | Coexistence between Democracy and Constitutionalism: Theoretical Foundations and Czech Practice |
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| Authors | |
| Year of publication | 2014 |
| Type | Article in Proceedings |
| Conference | Demokracie jako hodnota a problém II |
| Citation | |
| Keywords | constitutionalism, Czech constitutional court, constitutional democracy, democracy, human dignity, jurisprudence, political theory, rule of law, sovereignty |
| Description | Czech government does not fit a simple model of majoritarian representative democracy. In reality, we can hardly find a democratic political system, in which the representatives of the electors would not govern without the limitations in the name of those who elected them. Nowadays representative (majoritarian) democracy is always connected with the phenomenon of constitutionalim; governement of representatives elected by the people is always circumscribed by the institutional arrangement which aim is to limit and improve the government. The theory of constitutionalism emphasizes the importance of material limits of governmental power. We can thus best call contemporary political systems constitutional democracies. The aim of the present paper is to provide a concise view on the sometimes complicated marriage between democracy and constitutionalism both at a theoretical level (in which I will follow the late W. F. Murphy's approach) and in Czech practice, in particular through the analysis of the jurisprudence of the Czech Constitutional Court. |