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- Author or Editor: Jan Kudrna x
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The preambles are used in the Czech legal system during the last twenty years rather rarely. Nonetheless, constitutions in the Czechoslovak history as in the Czech history are traditionally introduced by the preambles. As the Czech constitutional system inclines to consist of more constitutional legal acts at the supreme level of the interior legal system, we can found two constitutional preambles in the recent Czech constitutional system. Both top constitutional acts-the Constitution and the Charter of Fundamental Rights and Basic Freedoms are preceded by their own preamble. The preambles differ as they are focused on different part of constitutional issues. Despite of this obvious fact they are built-up on some features, which are common to both of them. The preambles are characterized by a modest form-their purpose is to explain, why the new chapter of the legal development is opened, and to offer us a common starting line. Nonetheless, they also keep to us a freedom of movement in the new legal period. Their main goal is to connect the people, not to divide, if the constitutional act, which is introduced by them, should be an expression of the common national will.
This article deals with the issue of responsibility for the actions of the President. The author distinguishes among three basic forms of responsibility of the Head of State — constitutional, constitutional political and criminal responsibility. In the aggregate, they form the complex responsibility of the President. Individual types of responsibility of the President are described in the article in terms of their theoretical basis as well as mutual relations. Their origin and development within individual Czechoslovak and Czech constitutional regulations are also described. The article analyses their constitutional regulation in the Constitution of the Czech Republic until 7 March 2013, and particularly after this date when the full Constitutional Act No. 71/2013 Coll. came into effect. The Act significantly influenced the responsibility for the actions of the President. In conclusion, the author duly focuses on evaluation of the current constitutional regulation, including considerations about possible de lege ferenda improvements.
The article describes the impact of the 2008 global economic crisis on constitutional developments in the Czech Republic. The author does not focus only on monitoring the temporal coincidence of the submitted draft constitutional acts with the events known as the financial crisis, but also their direct substantive links with them. A temporal link is an insufficient criterion. The capital question is, if a causal link based upon a material aspect exists with regard to each specific example. From this viewpoint, the author suggests dividing proposals for constitutional changes in the Czech Republic into four categories described further in the article. The article tries to explain the Czech constitutional context and the very pro-active approach on the part of politicians to the text of the Constitution and proposals for its amendments, which are however seldom signed into law. The author reaches a general conclusion that the financial crisis itself did not lead to constitutional developments in the Czech Republic. On the other hand, the Czech Republic is undergoing a process (independent of the financial crisis) of the erosion of the political system and the system of political parties associated with a certain amount of public distrust in the traditional system of constitutional and political representations, with the emergence of requirements calling for the strengthening of elements of direct democracy and with the rise of new entities, often selfproclaiming them as being definitely not political parties, but non-political civic movements.
