Resumen de Constitutional courts and political uncertainty: Constitutional ruptures and the rule of judges
Nathan J. Brown, Julian G. Waller
In a constitutional rupture, when the fundamental rules of political life are uncertain, it is unlikely that constitutional courts could play a major role. Yet in some remarkable cases, such courts transform into highly interventionist political actors, even achieving some success. This paper provides a series of short case studies highlighting Hungary, Russia, Turkey, and South Africa to illustrate common elements that are shared across interventionist courts in such times—namely institutional centrality, strong and personalized court leadership, and division among elected branches of the state. All of these factors then combine with a court-derived constitutional vision that undergirds a constitutional court’s legitimacy in the extra-constitutional period. This dynamic is then applied in detail to the case of post-Mubarak Egypt in order to explore the ephemeral and self-limiting nature of the interventions.
