Nález Ústavního soudu k postavení soudních funkcionářů
The Ruling of the Constitutional Court on the Position of the Officials of the Courts

Summary/Abstract: This article offers a short analysis of the decision of the Constitutional Court of the Czech Republic (hereafter „Court“) from October 6th 2010, in which the Court ruled on several constitutional questions relating to the process of legislation and to the principle of judicial independence. In the first part of the decision the Court refused objections against the practice of the legislative process known as complex amendment, because this practice does not constitute any issues on „constitutional level“ and it generally does not jeopardize any procedural rights, neither of the government nor of the parliamentary minority. Despite all of its imperfections this practice also does not represent a major threat for good legislation. As regards the judiciary, the Court found the posibility of the assignment of a judge to the Ministry of Justice unconstitutional for being contradictory to the principles of independence of judicial power and the separation of powers. Furthermore, the Court revoked the competence of the Minister of Justice to the temporal deprivation of the function of a judge, an indeterminate number of vice-presidents of the Supreme Court, the possibility of renewing the tenure of presidents and vice-presidents of the courts and one transitory provision related to the length of the tenure of the current president of the Supreme Court. On the other hand, the Court considered the time-limited tenure of the officials of the courts to be in conformity with the constitution. This decision is so far the last in a long line of findings of the Court relating to the independence of judicial power, which – in the terms of the Czech Republic – is repeatedly impugned by the acts of both the legislative and executive power.

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