Guardians of the Constitution: Constitutional Court Presidents and the Struggle for the Rule of Law in Post-Soviet Europe

Abstract

When the Berlin Wall fell and the governments of the former Soviet world reconstituted themselves under new constitutions, every country in the region created a new constitutional court. Charged with ensuring that their nations’ new constitutions would in fact be followed, these new courts often became both the center of the population’s high hopes and a frequent annoyance for the elected governments that had to comply with their decisions. The hope was that the courts would be the “guardians of the constitution”; the reality