The Constitutional Court was composed of seven justices, three of whom were nominated by the President of the Republic, including the President of the Court. Two of the remaining four were taken from the ranks of the judges of the Supreme Court, and the other two from the Supreme Administrative Court. The application for a constitutional review in individual cases was reserved to the Supreme Court, the Supreme Administrative Court, the Electoral Court and to both Chambers of the National Assembly. There was a time-limit for filing the application: it was possible to review an individual Act within a period of three years after it had been promulgated. However, the Constitutional Court was not functioning properly within the Czechoslovak constitutional system between the World Wars. Soon after its first members were appointed, serious political obstacles to its activities became clearly visible, and the Court was not fully operative for most of its first term. There were practically no proposals to start proceedings before the Court regarding constitutional review of the Acts of Parliament. There was an attempt to promote the significance of the Constitutional Court between 1937 and 1938, when the Czechoslovak Government was seeking a certain modus vivendi regarding national minorities.227 It was proposed by the Government headed by Milan Hodža (within the draft of the Statutes of National Minorities) that the Constitutional Court would serve as a guarantor of minority rights, i.e. the Constitutional Court would deal with petitions in individual cases.228 Should Parliament not sit, both Chambers elected a specific “Permanent Committee” consisting of twenty-four members, sixteen of whom were from the Chamber of Deputies. This Committee was entrusted with passing legislation in the form of emergency provisions proposed by the Government and approved by the President. There were certain limits: for example, it was forbidden within such a regime to alter or amend the Constitution, and adopted provisions must have been approved by a subsequent full Parliament. The Constitutional Charter stipulated that Government decrees (or by-laws) would be issued only under the law and within its limits and provisions. However in practice, particularly in the 1930s, the legislative power of Parliament was bypassed through the introduction of so-called “entrusted” or delegated legislation. This type of legislation was used for the first time in the 1920s, when the democratic character of the state was endangered by the radical Communist left, and, subsequently, in the beginning of the 1930s in order to cope with economic problems of the Great Depression and political 227 See especially Policy Statement of the Czechoslovak Government on its Nationality Policies, February 20, 1937, Beneš, Z. – Kural, V. (eds.): Facing history: the evolution of Czech-German relations in the Czech provinces, 1848–1948, document No. 3, pp. 298–299. 228 Kuklík, J. – Němeček, J.: Od národnostního státu ke státu národností? Národnostní statut a snahy o řešení menšinové otázky v Československu v roce 1938. Prague: Nakladatelství Karolinum, 2013, pp. 48 and 315.
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