Procedural and Organizational Aspects of Constitutional Justice in Albania

How do you defend democracy? How do you protect your rights? How can you repeal a law that interferes with your sphere of rights? These are some of the questions that any citizen in a democratic country should know in order to enjoy his/her freedom and rights. Even a small country like Albania is no exception. New and modern Constitutions, aim to regulate the exercise of state power, based on the principle of separation of powers and to the respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms. Despite the fact that this important principle helps to control the activity between different state institutions, the history has shown that this has not always been an efficient solution. So, the world is full of examples where a parliamentary majority, that have come to power through democratic processes, has used its power to control the others power of a country and had violated the human rights and fundamental freedoms. For this reason, the drafters of the constitution after the Second World War in Western Europe and after the fall of communism in Eastern European countries, have established and regulated the creation of the Constitutional Court as an institution which can defend the sphere of the competencies of other institutions with constitutional nature and the protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms. This possibility can only be realized using procedural means, through which the Constitutional Court is put into motion. The purpose of this book is precisely, to analyze these procedural mechanisms with regard to the principles of the constitutional process, the jurisdictions, the admissibility of the applications, the procedural position of the parties, the terms and their calculation, procedural acts and evidence that can be used, as well as, procedural characteristics for each constitutional process. A good knowledge of these principles and rules of procedure helps the different applicants who presented themselves to the Constitutional Court to have higher chances to succeed and to be accepted instead of being dismissing because of procedural deficiencies. This book show all of this aspects in the content of the Albanian experience.