Shaping the appointment powers of the Slovak president under constitutional conventions

In the last decade, more and more Slovak constitutional lawyers are beginning to recognize that the Slovak constitutional system is regulated not only by the text of the constitution but also by unwritten constitutional conventions. The relevance and significance of the conventions are addressed mainly in the discussion on the limits of the president’s powers. Slovakia is a parliamentary republic, but due to the fact that its head is directly elected and that it has a number of crucial appointment powers, the way in which the presidency is exercised becomes the subject of severe political and, subsequently, legal conflicts. In this paper, we will first show how constitutional conventions work, when their existence is generally acknowledged. These are the practices that regulate the president’s discretion during the formation of a new government after the parliamentary election. Subsequently, we will show how constitutional conventions work when their content is politically and legally disputed. These are the practices that regulate the president’s discretion in appointing the attorney general and the constitutional judges. Our analysis shows that where conventions are indisputable, they contribute to the formation and strengthening of the constitutional system into a functional whole. On the contrary, where customs are controversial, they give an opportunity for arbitrary argumentation and thus they escalate the political conflict.