Mobility Phase: Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznan & Humboldt University, Berlin
How Constitutional Loyalty affects the Separation of Powers. An Essay on Romanian Constitutional Court's Jurisprudence and Institutional Practice
Photo: Joanna Scheffel
Since 2007, Bogdan Dima is teaching Administrative Law at the Faculty of Law, University of Bucharest. Starting with 2020, he also teaches Political Institutions at the same Faculty. His professional background is highly diversified and focuses on constitutional and legislative affairs, political and electoral strategies, legislative analysis and institutional building processes. He worked closely with several political parties, NGOs and different companies along the years. Since April 2015 until July 2018, he worked for the Presidential Administration in Romania as Counsellor within the Department of Institutional and Constitutional Reform. Together with Prof. Simina Tănăsescu he coordinated a research project aiming at analysing the constitutional reform in Romania, and published a report called “Reviewing the Constitution: Analysis and Perspectives” (2012). He is author of “the Conflict between the Palaces. Power relations between the Parliament, Government and President in Post-Communist Romania” (2014), as well as “the Systems of Government in Democracies from Central and South-Eastern Europe” (2015).
How Constitutional Loyalty affects the Separation of Powers. An Essay on Romanian Constitutional Court's Jurisprudence and Institutional Practice
The Constitutional Court of Romania developed the concept of constitutional loyalty as part of the larger concepts of the rule of law and constitutional supremacy. In essence, constitutional loyalty implies an obligation for the public authorities to seek loyal cooperation, as an extension of the principle of the separation of powers and an instrument for the application of the rule of law. During the fellowship program I intend to develop a comparative analysis regarding the principle of constitutional loyalty, relying mainly on the jurisprudence of the Bundesverfassungsgericht, as well as the jurisprudence of Constitutional Courts from different Central and Eastern European countries. One of my major hypothesis is that the theory and practice of constitutional loyalty in Romania are quite unique in the realm of European constitutionalism and raise many questions concerning the relation between constitutional justice and politics.
