The contribution reacts to various thoughts about the present state of constitutionalism in the V4 countries. The author argues that the constitutional court, an institutional check on majoritarian decision-making, has been an indispensable component of constitutional-building in the Central European area. However, the model of a highly esteemed constitutional court, with its justices, nominated in a bipartisan manner, has been regularly contested, especially by those who were supposed to be constrained thereby. To outlive current and future populist waves, a result of vibrant discourse between political branches of government and a selfrestrained constitutional court has a strong potential to stabilize democracy in the region, marked by authoritarian governments of the second half of the 20 th century. Thus, the article will reason that we, the Central Europeans, need "more", rather than "less" constitutionalism to protect the legacy of the last democratic revolution. Liberty (1953) Keywords

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Limits of the exercise of constitutional power in the Slovak Republic. (Habilitation lecture). On the background of the existential tension between democracy and constitutionalism, the article addresses the limits of the exercise of constitutional power in the Slovak Republic. In doing so, it maps out both explicit and implicit limits of the constitutional process. First it analyses internal, i.e. national restrictions resulting from the Slovak constitutional order and then focuses to limits, the existence of which is implicitly shaped by external legal orders. Some of these restrictions on the exercise of constitutional power are quite unequivocal, others represent so far unapplied, rather hypothetical limits. The submitted text defends the need for the existence of inherent limits of the exercise of constitutional power. They are an expression of the restriction on the exercise of any power, which is the basic postulate of democratic constitutionalism. In the end of the article, the author calls for the establishment of system balance in the exercise of constitutional power of the National Council. Such approach namely supports the possibility of democratic constitutional modification and will ensure accentuation of principles of constitutionalism, without the need of fixation of the constitution to any form (implicit or explicit) of inviolability. Key words: constitutionalism. democracy. division of power. constitutional power. limits of the exercise of constitutional power. inviolable constitutionalised provisions. implicit inviolability of constitution 1 Úvod Koncepty demokracie a konštitucionalizmu existujú v neustálom a nezmieriteľnom napätí. Legitimita demokratického rozhodovania vychádza zo súhlasu ovládaných a je tradične stelesnená vládou väčšiny. 2 Leitmotívom konštitucionalizmu je zase deľba moci * JUDr. Kamil B a r a n í k, PhD., LL.M. Katedra ústavného práva a právnej teórie Právnickej fakulty Univerzity Mateja Bela, Banská Bystrica.1 Habilitačná prednáška v študijnom odbore ústavné právo sa uskutočnila 10. novembra 2020 o 13. hodine na Právnickej fakulte Univerzity Komenského v Bratislave.2 Hoci existujú mnohé modifikácie pojmu demokracia (pozri napr. FRANKENBERG, G. Democracy. In ROSENFELD, M. -SÁJO, A. (eds.). The Oxford Handbook of Comparative Constitutional Law. Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2012, s. 252 -256) a "nie je neobvyklé nájsť demokratický režim, v ktorom predstavitelia zákonodarného zboru reprezentujú menšinu populácie" (BARAK, A. Sudca v demokracii. Bratislava : Kalligram, 2016, s. 57), tento príspevok bude vychádzať z chápania demokracie ako vlády ľudu, z ktorej vyplýva väčšinové rozhodovanie. Právny obzor 1/2021 KAMIL BARANÍK3 -25 a ochrana základných ľudských práv. 3 Primárnym prejavom konštitucionalizmu je písaná ústava, ktorej podstata tkvie v limitovaní výkonu štátnej moci. Konštitucionalizmus vyvažuje väčšinové rozhodovanie konkrétnymi systémovými poistkami (ako napr. súdny prieskum ústavnosti, postavenie opozície v parlamente, nezávislé kontrolné orgány či koncept ochra...

Summary The article deals with the Slovak Constitutional Court’s approach to the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights as a potential source of constitutional review. It analyses selected SCC decisions in order to evaluate and generalise the SCC attitude. The main focus is on defining the constitutional status of the EU Charter within the Slovak constitutional order. The up-to-date practice of the Constitutional Court is associated with an inevitable confusion when formally the Charter belongs among the sources of constitutional review, but by applying the doctrine of self-restriction, the SCC uses it only in a subsidiary way or in the form of a soft interpretation instrument to support its reasoning.

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