The effectiveness of the constitutional complaint as a legal remedy against the violation of constitutional rights

Abstract

The article is devoted to the effectiveness of the constitutional complaint as a specific subsidiary legal remedy against the violation of constitutional rights. The article analyzes significant legal consequences of the consideration of constitutional complaints by the Constitutional Court of Ukraine with their relation to the protection of the person’s fundamental rights and freedoms and the system-functional connection of constitutional complaint with other remedies.

Three groups of approaches are examined to determine when the Constitutional Court acts start to act: ex tunc ("from the beginning"), ex nunc ("from now") and pro futuro ("to the future"). The contradistinction of the doctrine of nullity acts (recognized as unconstitutional) and the doctrine of their derogation has been investigated. The analysis of the national court decisions revealed that the unconstitutionality of the court's application of a legal act or its separate provision does not determine the review of the final court decisions. It is proved that the regulatory mechanism of functional interaction of the courts concerning casual constitutional control needs the most urgent but thought-out adjustment.

It should also be stated, that the approach taken to the 2017 procedural reform to determine the legally significant consequences of the unconstitutionality of a law, another legal act, or their separate provision applied by a court in resolving a case, remains to be unchanged. However, the existence of this approach seems to be at least paradoxical regarding the adoption of a constitutional complaint in Ukraine, which is one of the newest legal remedies of subsidiary and exclusive nature.

Subjects of the right for constitutional complaint, having exhausted all other national remedies, having fulfilled the complex requirements in drafting and lodging a constitutional complaint, will not be able to review the final court decision in their case, in which a court applied the law recognized as unconstitutional (whole or its separate provision). Contrary to the direct reference to such possibility in the procedural legislation.

It is not possible to resolve the current situation without changes to the Constitution of Ukraine and the Law on the Constitutional Court on the validity of the acts of the Constitutional Court of Ukraine as a whole, and on decisions on constitutional complaints in particular.