| Article | Unconstitutionality of the Legislative Gap |
|---|---|
| Authors | VADYM CHOVGAN |
| Name of magazine | Legal journal «Law of Ukraine» (Ukrainian version) |
| Issue | 12 / 2018 |
| Pages | 114 - 127 |
| Annotation | The article draws attention to the practice of refusing by the Constitutional Court of Ukraine to verify the constitutionality of legislative gaps. This practice of the CCU is clear-cut and has already brought negative consequences for the protection of human rights: petitioners have been denied consideration of their constitutional complaints. At the same time, the vast majority of European countries exercise constitutional control over legislative gaps. That is how a proactive role of constitutional jurisdiction bodies is ensured in cases of omission on the part of the parliament. Given this situation, the article aims to emphasize the negative practical consequences of the CCU’s refusal to verify the constitutionality of legislative gaps. It seeks to demonstrate how the relevant foreign practices can be implemented in Ukraine. Therefore, additional ways are proposed on how to develop the national constitutional law doctrine towards more progressive foreign approaches. To achieve the purpose of the article, the author analyses the relevant practices of foreign constitutional courts. He demonstrates how these practices can be implemented in the activities of the CCU, even without introducing amendments to the national legislation. In the nearest future, these proposals may come in handy to consider a number of constitutional complaints on issues related to the “legal vacuum”. The analysis shows that the constitutional courts do not exercise control over constitutionality of legislative gaps are in the minority. However, unlike in Ukraine, some of them do this due to the lack of a concept of legal gaps in their doctrine. Constitutional courts that deliberately refuse to review the constitutionality of legislative gaps are rather exceptions. Moreover, unlike courts that conduct such a review, they do not seem to be known for having best traditions of constitutionalism. Review of the constitutionality of gaps may well be introduced into the practice of the CCU. To this end, there is a number of ways, such as declaring the rules with gaps unconstitutional inasmuch as they “do not provide for”, while the remaining of the norm does not cease to function. However, such introduction would require courage sufficient enough to change the conservative stance of the CCU. Whereas it is too early to state on the presence of such courage, this article could be used to expand the existing approaches to interpreting the powers of the CCU in consideration of cases connected with such causes of human rights violations as legislative gaps |
| Keywords | legislative gap, constitutional complaint, legal vacuum, constitutional control, constitutional court, lifers, life imprisonment |
| References | List of legal documents |
| Electronic version | Download |