Constitutional courts occupy a distinctive position in democratic systems: they are simultaneously constrained by the preferences of governing majorities and empowered to reshape the legislative status quo through their rulings. Comparative research on constitutional adjudication has grown substantially in recent decades, yet several fundamental questions remain contested.
Do courts behave as strategic actors that anticipate governmental reactions, or do they decide primarily on legal grounds, insulated from political pressure? When courts do respond to political incentives, which features of the political environment matter most — the ideological composition of the governing majority, its cohesion, its electoral strength, or the proximity of elections? And does institutional design — the rules governing access to the court, the quorum required for a ruling of unconstitutionality, the presence or absence of dissenting opinions, the degree of transparency of deliberations — systematically shape judicial behaviour across different systems of constitutional review?
A further set of questions concerns the outcomes of adjudication. Most comparative studies focus on whether a constitutional challenge succeeds or fails. Yet this binary framing conceals important variation: courts may avoid substantive adjudication through admissibility rulings, strike down provisions without replacing them, or act as positive legislators by substituting new normative content. Whether these distinct outcomes respond to the same political and institutional determinants, or follow different logics, remains largely unexplored in comparative perspective.
This panel invites contributions that address these questions through empirical analysis of constitutional courts across different systems — concentrated and diffuse review, mediated and direct access, permitting or prohibiting public dissent — in Europe and beyond. Both large-N quantitative studies and theoretically informed case comparisons are welcome.
