Intra-Executive Power Relations Under the Romanian Constitutional Court's Case Law

Constitutional review became a sine qua non condition for any modern democratic regime. Most scholars agree that a constitutional review mechanism enhancing higher constitutional norms of the social contract against the legislative and administrative decisions of ever changing political majorities is a key element of the rule of law in a well-established functional democracy. Thus, either from an Anglo-American perspective, either from an European continental perspective, constitutional review became not only a widespread accepted mechanism for the protection of human rights and freedoms of the individuals, but also an efficient dispute resolution mechanism among different levels of government, as well between the institutions of the same branch of government. My presentation focuses on the dispute resolution function of the Constitutional Court in Romania and the influence of its case law on intra-executive power relations. Over the years, some of the conflicts between the President and the Prime-minister regarding the representation of the state in foreign and European affairs, countersignature of the presidential decrees or appointments of ministers in the case of a government reshuffle were judged and solved by the Constitutional Court. As a result, the Court has developed the abstract and general constitutional provisions regulating the power relations between the President and the Prime-minister, and even pronounced itself on the nature of the semi-presidential system of government. It seems that the Romanian case is a very good example from which constitutional law and political science scholars could develop new comparative instruments for a better understanding of the functioning of semi-presidential systems of government and dynamic of intra-executive and executive-legislative power relations. Most of the literature on semi-presidentialism deals with explanatory variables such as presidential formal or informal powers, the structure and nature of the political party system or even the personality of the political actors holding presidential and cabinet offices. There are few to none debates on the role of the constitutional courts` case law dealing with the intra-executive and executive-legislative power relations in semi-presidential systems of government. I shall structure my paper into three parts. In the first part I shall present the prerogatives of the Constitutional Court which might have an influence on the functioning of any semi-presidential system of government, with a focus on the prerogative of the Romanian Constitutional Court to judge judicial conflicts of constitutional nature between the fundamental institutions of the state. In the second part I shall present the main cases brought before the Court as a result of the intra-executive conflicts and the decisions of the Court which directly or indirectly influenced the power relations between the President and the Prime-minister. In the third part I shall propose a matrix for comparative analysis which should depict the influence of the constitutional courts` case law on the intra-executive power relations in semi-presidential systems of government.