The Constitutional Court is the guardian of human rights and freedoms. There are a lot of constitutional law studies concerned with constitutional personal and political rights, but economic freedom is not often analyzed by constitutional law scholars. However, the situation fundamentally changed when in 2020 after the spread of the COVID-19 virus, state authorities took various measures (inter alia measures to limit economic activity) in order to prevent the spread of the virus. All these restrictions on the freedom of economic activity caused large financial losses, which led to an active discussion by society and legal researchers: does the Constitutional Court protect the activities of economic entities? This difficult economic period forced society to remember that economic freedom should be considered a category of exceptional importance because it creates the conditions for the existence of the entire social order. However, in Lithuania, as in other post-soviet states, economic freedom was forgotten for more than 50 years. After the restoration of independence in Lithuania and the adoption of the Constitution, the economic freedom of the private entity again became a constitutional value. Therefore, the Constitutional Court faced a great challenge to develop the concept and the protection mechanism of this freedom. This paper presents the constitutional jurisprudence formed by the Constitutional Court of the Republic of Lithuania over 30 years related to economic freedom. The study of this jurisprudence showed that in the first decade of the independence of the Republic of Lithuania, the freedom of economic activity was particularly encouraged by the Constitutional Court, with the aim of creating the foundations of the market economy as soon as possible. Later, the main aim of the Constitutional Court was to ensure the energy independence of Lithuania and in the third decade of independence, constitutional jurisprudence increasingly analyzed the possibilities of finding a balance between health and environmental protection requirements and economic freedom.

Bibliography

Authored books

1. de Soto Hernando, The Other Path: The Economic Answer to Terrorism (Basic Books 1986; reprint edition, 2002) (in English).

2. Juškevičiūtė-Vilienė Agnė, Asmens ūkinės veiklos laisvės konstituciniai pagrindai Lietuvoje: ekonominės, istorinės ir lyginamosios įžvalgos (Vilnius University 2017) (in Lithuanian).

Edited books

3. Juškevičiūtė-Vilienė Agnė, ‘Some Aspects of Economic Regulation in Lithuanian Constitutional Law: From Planned Economy to the Fourth Industrial Revolution’ w Legal Developments During 30 Years of Lithuanian Independence. Overview of Legal Accomplishments and Challenges in Lithuania (Švedas G, Murauskas D red, Springer 2020) (in English).

Journal articles

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