Constitutional Jurisdiction and Protection of Fundamental Rights in Europe

Abstract

Abstract This chapter sketches out the development of (constitutional) courts in Europe into ‘citizen’s courts’, whose main task is to protect fundamental rights. It draws a line from the United States Supreme Court, as the first of its kind, to today’s constitutional courts of Europe, the ECJ and the ECtHR. In doing so, it analyses extensively the growing importance of fundamental rights protection for constitutional courts all over Europe during the twentieth century, in particular after the Second World War. More recently, however, the influence of European law leads to a responsibility of all domestic courts to assess questions of fundamental rights. This makes an intensive dialogue necessary to clarify the distribution of competences and take into account the experience of specialized constitutional courts.