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Concept
Constitutional Court of the Czech Republic
Summary
The Constitutional Court of the Czech Republic (Ústavní soud České republiky) is a specialized type of court which primarily works to protect the people in the Czech Republic against violations of the Constitution by either the legislature, government or by any other subject that violates people's constitutional rights and freedoms. In this respect, it is similar in functionality to the Supreme Court of the United States, but is distinct from the Supreme Court of the Czech Republic. Of all the various levels of the Czech Judiciary it is the one created with the greatest specificity in the constitution.
The decisions of the Court are final, cannot be overturned and are considered a source of law, similar to precedents in a common law system.
Although the Court itself was established only in 1993, its Czechoslovak predecessor was already provided for in the Constitution of 1920, making Czechoslovakia the first country in the world with a system of judicial review by a specialized court (although the court itself first convened after the Austrian one). It was later adopted by many other countries.
The development of the Czech constitutional tradition went initially hand in hand with that in Austria-Hungary, to which the Czech Crown lands belonged between 1806–1918. The first attempts to establish a system based on constitution were connected with the 1848 Revolution. A number of constitutions were enacted during the Austrian period (April 1848, March 1849, February 1861 all enacted by the king, December 1867 enacted by the Parliament), however these were far from being democratic and did not include the possibility of judicial review of the acts of the Parliament nor the Habsburg sovereigns. Although the attempt to democratize the Habsburg monarchy failed at the time, it marked the beginning of Czech political activization which ultimately brought about personalities such as Karel Kramář or Tomáš Masaryk, who later took part in the establishment of the First Czechoslovak Republic and its constitutional tradition.
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