Constitutional Court under fire: Has law given way to power? The NATO case scares lawyers, politicians and citizens

The Constitutional Court is the pinnacle of the protection of constitutionality. It is precisely for this reason that more is expected from it than from any other court – not only the right result, but above all a faultless process. However, the decision in the competence dispute over the participation of the president of the republic at the NATO summit raised questions that go beyond the dispute between the president and the government. It is not just about who was right about the matter itself. It is a matter of whether the court itself, while protecting the Constitution, upheld the principles of a fair trial, or whether it began to weaken them in the name of urgency.

The most serious reservation refers to the procedural procedure itself. The preliminary measure was issued extremely quickly without, according to publicly available information, the government being given the opportunity to comment on the president's proposal before it was issued. The right to be heard, the adversarial principle and the equality of participants are not technical formalities. They are the basic pillars of a fair trial, enshrined in the Charter of Fundamental Rights and Freedoms and in the jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights. However, it is all the more important to convincingly justify why such a limitation of procedural rights was necessary and reasonable in a specific case.

Another fundamental issue is the very existence of a legal basis for the issuance of a preliminary measure in a jurisdictional dispute. The Act on the Constitutional Court does not explicitly regulate this institute for proceedings on competence disputes. The majority of the plenary concluded that the subsidiary application of the Code of Civil Procedure could be used. However, two constitutional judges came out against this interpretation in their different opinion. They pointed out that the subsidiary application of procedural regulations cannot by itself create new powers of the court where the law does not expressly provide for them. This is not a fringe academic debate. It is a question of whether the court can expand its own competences through an extensive interpretation.

Equally problematic is the nature of the interim measure itself. The court did not limit itself to prohibiting certain actions, but imposed active obligations on the government - to ensure the president's participation, to take the necessary steps against the organizers of the summit and to create conditions for the exercise of the disputed authority. Such intervention has a much more intensive character than the usual temporary adjustment of conditions. The question therefore arises as to whether the preliminary measure did not in fact anticipate the outcome of the proceedings on the merits.

Interim measures are intended to prevent irreparable harm, not to prematurely decide the dispute itself. In this case, it can be legitimately debated whether there was really a threat of such harm that could not be remedied by a decision on the merits. It was precisely this doubt that was formulated by the different opinion of part of the plenary. If the highest constitutional authorities do not even agree on the existence of a legal basis for issuing a measure, critical expert debate is not a sign of disrespect for the court, but rather a necessary part of constitutional culture.

Another aspect is the extraordinary speed of decision making. The Constitutional Court made a decision in a very short time. It can be argued that the impending summit required urgent action. Still, the contrast with normal decision-making practice, where individuals wait months, sometimes years, for a decision on their constitutional complaints cannot be overlooked. This does not in itself mean a violation of the law, but it raises the legitimate question of what criteria the court determines the procedural priority of individual cases and whether these criteria are sufficiently transparent.

There were also public reflections that most of the members of the plenary were appointed by the president, who was the petitioner in the given proceedings. However, the mere fact of appointment does not automatically constitute bias according to the Czech constitutional order or according to European standards. On the other hand, the requirement of objective impartiality cannot be ignored either - i.e. that the court not only be impartial, but that it also acts as such externally. The public's trust in the judiciary is a value that must be protected above all by the courts themselves.

The whole case thus opens up a wider problem. The rule of law does not stand only on the right ends, but above all on the right means. If procedural rules begin to bend according to the urgency of a particular case or according to the belief of the correctness of the expected result, a dangerous precedent is created. It is procedural rules that protect the citizen from arbitrariness. Once they become mere recommendations, the very essence of the rule of law is weakened.

This is not an attack on the Constitutional Court as an institution. Criticism of court decisions is a legitimate part of a democratic society. On the contrary, the Constitutional Court should be the institution that can withstand the strictest professional scrutiny. If the court expands its powers by extensive interpretation, makes decisions extremely quickly without the other side having the opportunity to comment before issuing a preliminary measure, and adopts procedurally unusual solutions on issues of fundamental constitutional importance, it is quite legitimate to ask whether it is not thereby pushing the boundaries of its role beyond legal norms.

It is therefore worth pondering if this decision is not a tip-off that "the Czech judiciary has moved from law to lawlessness. This dispute is therefore a clear warning: if even the highest judicial institution raises serious procedural doubts, it is a signal that the protection of the principles of a fair trial must not be taken for granted. Confidence in the judiciary is not only built by the results of decisions, but above all by the conviction that the rules apply equally to everyone. That is why every significant procedural exception should be subjected to extremely strict If this is not the case, there is a danger that exceptions will gradually become the rule - and this would represent a much greater risk for the rule of law than the mere dispute over participation in one international summit.

Source:

The Constitutional Court of the Czech Republic. (2026).Resolution of the plenary session stamp Pl. ÚS 16/26 of 24 June 2026 (including the dissenting opinion of Judge Jan Wintra and Judge Dita Řepková).Brno: Constitutional Court. Available from:Constitutional Court – Pl. ÚS 16/26.

The Constitutional Court of the Czech Republic. (2026).The Constitutional Court issued a procedural decision in the proceedings on the competence dispute between the President of the Republic and the government.Brno: Constitutional Court. Available from:Press release of the Constitutional Court.

Czech Radio - iROZHLAS. (2026).According to the expert, the first verdict of the Constitutional Court on the competence suit will determine how it will decide the entire case.Available from:iROZHLAS – analysis of the competence lawsuit.

Czech television. (2026).The ÚS imposed a preliminary measure on the government to ensure the participation of the president in the NATO summit.Available from:ČT24 – decision of the Constitutional Court.

Society Solomon. (2026).Preliminary measure of the Constitutional Court in Pl. ÚS 16/26: a procedural shortcut or a dangerous breakthrough?Available from:Solomon Society - expert commentary.