When Constitutional Institutions Are Not Taken Seriously. Several Remarks on Impeachment in the Czech Constitution

Keywords: impeachment, President of the Republic, period for taking a decision, suspension of Presidential powers, gross breach of constitutional order, Constitutional Court

Abstract: Based on historical and geographic comparisons, the present article analyses several controversial aspects of the impeachment procedure against the President of the Republic in the Czech Constitution, namely the absence of a period during which the Constitutional Court should decide, the absence of suspension of the exercise of Presidential powers in case the impeachment procedure is launched, and still quite an ambiguous definition of the acts for which the President of the Republic should be responsible and on which the Constitutional Court should decide in the context of the impeachment procedure. The text also discusses whether there are no alternatives to conferring the powers of trying the President of the Republic on the Constitutional Court which will find itself under very strong pressure from both the political actors and the public in case an impeachment procedure is initiated. The fact that these and other controversial aspects are inherent in the procedure leads the author to conclude that when the Czech Constitution was elaborated, the prospect of the impeachment procedure was probably not taken seriously enough or it was not presumed that such procedure would actually take place.