Courts, Politics and Constitutional Law

Dr Martin Belov is Associate Professor in Constitutional and Comparative Constitutional Law at the University of Sofia ‘St Kliment Ohridski’, Faculty of Law. He is also Vice Dean of the same law faculty. In addition, he has been a project researcher at Max-Planck Institute for European Legal History (Frankfurt am Main, Germany) and a visiting researcher at the Institute for Federalism (Fribourg, Switzerland). He has specialized at the University of Oxford, UK; Max- Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law, Heidelberg, Germany; University of Cologne, Germany; and many other European academic institutions.

Part I: Courts and Democracy;

1. Democracy and Courts beyond the Ideological Banality;

2. Disempowering courts: The Interrelationship between Courts and Politics in Contemporary Legal Orders or the manifold ways of attacking judicial independence;

Part II: Courts and Their Relationship with Legislative and Executive Power;

3. Courts and Legislation: Do Legislators and Judges Speak the Same Language?;

4. Text, Values and Interpretation: The Role of Judges and Legislative Power in Private Law;

5. Supreme courts in Sweden: are they "real" judges?

6. From Separation of Powers to Superiority of Rights: the Italian Constitutional Court and End-of-Life Decisions;

Part III: Courts, Constitution-Making, and the Separation between Constituent and Constituted Powers;

7. The Negative Legislator: On Kelsen’s Idea of a Constitutional Court;

8. Constitutional Courts as Ultimate Players in Multilevel Constituent Power Games: the Bulgarian Case;

9. Courts in the Constitution-making process: Paradoxes and Justifications;

10. The Least Dangerous Branch? Constitutional Review of Constitutional Amendments in Europe;

Part IV: The Role of Courts in the Context of Democratic Backsliding, Illiberal Democracies and Populist Constitutionalism;

11. Constitutional Courts in the Context of Constitutional Regression. Some Comparative Remarks;

12. The Use of the EU Infringement Procedures to Protect De Facto the Rule of Law via the Development of the Parameter: From Obligations under the Treaties to the Charter of Fundamental Rights;