Abstract:
The paper has the purpose of telling the story of dissenting opinions and discusses the use of this instrument by constitutional courts in a comparative perspective. The gradual spreading of dissenting opinions all over Europe illustrates that the countries of East-Central Europe emerging from Communism, in many aspects, followed the German model of constitutional justice as a full package, without seeing it first in the details, but only enriching it with new competencies. The paper examines the 'migration' of this legal phenomenon that left England for the United States in the baggage of common law, then moved to Germany in order to take part in the reconstruction of a country destroyed by a war and an extremist ideology, that subsequently travelled to Spain, where it served to uphold and renew judicial traditions, and finally arrived in East-Central Europe to help in the building of constitutional democracy.
Kelemen, Katalin, The Road from Common Law to East-Central Europe: The Case of the Dissenting Opinion (October 2010). Paper presented at the Second Central and Eastern European Forum for Young Legal, Social and Political Theorists, organized in Budapest, 21-22 May 2010, published in P. Cserne−M. Könczöl (eds), Legal and Political Theory in the Post-National Age, Frankfurt-[etc.], Peter Lang Publ., 2011, p. 118-134.
