Government Lawyers and Non-judicial Constitutional Review in Estonia

Abstract

FOR A DECADE NOW, the national courts of the former Soviet satellite states of Central and Eastern Europe have been presiding over the establishment of democratic norms and the rule of law, as institutions central to the consolidation of democracy. With a number of these states' accession to the European Union in 2004, scholars' analyses shift from documenting democratic transition efforts to studying the specific judicial institutional arrangements used to secure democratic constitutionalism in these postcommunist democracies (Herron & Randazzo, 2003, Ishiyama Smithey & Ishiyama, 2002). While constitutional adjudication is fundamental to constitutional democracy, it is by no means the only or even the most critical task facing national courts during consolidation; moreover, in this task national constitutional courts play a large but by