Flashes in the Pan or Constitutional Metamorphoses?

Abstract

The basic idea is to connect two phenomena characterising some constitutional contexts but not always put in strict relation: on one side, the mechanisms devised by several courts according to which they can address structural problems via individual petitions, guiding (or even deputising) the action of other branches to take measures correcting those distortions and, on the other, the crisis of representation that seems to make legislators and executives inadequate for providing the justice to which citizens aspire. It is not only the judicialisation of politics; it is rather the possible transforming role of the judiciary against the backdrop of the representation crisis. Then, the question is whether the growing shift of trust from the classic representative form of democracy to technocracy may trigger only ephemeral changes or if it is destined to lead to actual constitutional metamorphoses: are courts destined to look like ancient parliaments?