515 / 536
501
CYIL 7 ȍ2016Ȏ INTERNATIONAL HUMANRIGHTS OBLIGATIONS OF POSTǧCOMMUNIST COUNTRIES
On the other hand, the books also concedes that the Bankruptcy judgment
brought a number of negative sideeffects, e.g. in the preventive review of the
constitutionality of international treaties before their ratification (the review now
includes their compatibility with other international human rights treaties) or in the
very qualification of a treaty as a human rights one (it is the ordinary court which
does the qualification in the first place; if the court does not find the treaty to have
a human rights nature, it may directly apply the treaty).
Nevertheless, the most startling conclusion that this chapter contains is the number
of Constitutional Court decisions which actually include reference to a human rights
treaty in their reasoning (namely the words Convention, Covenant or Charter).
They are used in only 18 % of all decisions (p. 108). At first sight, it may turn out
that the Czech Constitutional Court is not as international-human-rights-treaties-
friendly as one would expect it to be. But is that number really telling? In the absolute
majority of decisions the Constitutional Court rejects constitutional appeals for being
manifestly ill-founded or lacking one of the procedural requirements. The reasoning
of such decisions is usually not fully exhausting. It is frequently sufficient for the
Constitutional Court to refer to domestic constitutional provisions which provide
safeguards identical to the human rights treaties. For these reasons, there is no need
to overestimate the said number, in my opinion.
The Slovak chapter of this part of the book provides the reader with an opportunity
to get to know a lot of new information too. The author adds a lot of personal
memories and opinions on the story of international human rights treaties in Slovak
constitutional law. I quite like his confession that he changed many of his opinions
on this topic in the course of time. And it is an entertaining read to find out that the
Czech Bankruptcy judgment had certain repercussions even for the understanding of
human rights treaties in Slovak constitutional law (pp. 116-117).
4. Human rights treaties and chosen domestic actors
The topic of the fourth part is undoubtedly the most catchy one. I was so looking
forward to it! In my opinion, the work of the Czech Supreme Court, Supreme
Administrative Court and NGOs with international human rights treaties is the
ultimate criterion of their effectiveness in legal practice.
The “judicial” chapter of this part of the book is based on highly developed
methodology. This allows the authors to come up with several remarkable conclusions.
For example, they found out that international human rights treaties are used most
frequently as a supportive argument (p. 151). I totally agree that sometimes the human
rights treaty serves as a “breeding ground” for further legal arguments, or as additional
legitimization of legal opinions already reached. It does not come as a surprise to me
that the Supreme Administrative Court applies human rights treaties the most in the
area of asylum and alien law. International and European instruments do set important