For the past month, each citizen of Armenia had the right to appeal to the Constitutional Court. According to the first Constitution of Armenia, only the president of Armenia, Armenian MPs, as well as Armenian presidential and parliamentary candidates had the right to do that when making arguments about the debates concerning election results. Only after the passing of the new Constitution did citizens get the right to do that too. However, it’s not every time that citizens can appeal to the Constitutional Court.
Based on the 101st article of the Armenian Constitution, “any citizen can appeal to the CC with a certain case, when he/she has the court’s decision, can’t defend his/her case in court and argues to constitute the case based on the law.”
In other words, the citizen isn’t going to appeal for checking the legality of the court verdict, rather he will check to see if that corresponds to the Armenian Constitution. The citizen can do this only after going through all three court instances of Armenia. The general prosecutor and judges may also appeal to the Constitutional Court in order to check the constitutionality of the laws.
Head of the CC administration Arushan Hakobyan says that 223 citizens have appealed during the past month, of which 85 appeals have been accepted and registered. The majority of the citizens didn’t protest for the constitutionality of the law. The cases differed from one another.
Only ten of the CC appeals have been examined and handed over to the two CC courts. Each court committee consists of three members and is formed based on the new law of the Constitution.
They examine the citizens’ appeals and decide on behalf of the CC whether to approve or disapprove. After that, the appeal is presented to the CC work group and a court session is appointed.
The first appeal to be presented was by member of the “Republic” party board Artak Zeynalyan. He’s making an argument to the CC to consider the 160th article of the civil court code as invalid. Based on the mentioned article of the civil court code, the competent courts refuse to examine the decisions made by the Armenian government, the president’s orders and consider the regulations as invalid.
“The appeals regarding invalidity not examined by the court are the ones that are not compatible to the Armenian Constitution and that is the exclusive competency of the Constitution,” as stated in the 160th article of the Civil Court code. Basically, that clause contradicts the 1st and 18th articles of the Constitution.
Based on the 18th article, “Each person has the judicial, as well as state defense to protect his rights and freedoms.” Judging from that, each citizen can protest the government’s decisions, the president’s orders and regulations. According to head of the CC administration, the court committee still hasn’t made a final decision regarding the examination of Artak Zeynalyan’s appeal. The appeal investigation has been postponed for a week. The court committee has rejected one appeal. Five cases have been presented and the other three are under investigation. During its 10 year history, the Constitutional Court has accepted and examined eight cases of constitutionality of law. Back then, only Armenian MPs and the president had the right to appeal. Ten cases have made it to the Constitutional Court in a month. So, Armenian citizens are more aware of the laws than the people that pass them.
It’s the same legal field. The Constitutional Court hasn’t really changed. All this time nobody has appealed to the CC for the mistakes. The citizens have found mistakes in a month,” says Arushan Hakobyan. The reason for this is that citizens know more about the laws and see the flaws.