The Fate of A Scholar at the Core of Constitutionalism

The article is a detailed review of a collective monograph published in honor of W.Sadurski, a prominent Australian legal scholar of Polish origin. It illuminates the most important problems of concern today to the international legal community. In particular, it is about the coming to power in a number of EU countries of right-wing populists who demonstratively disregard liberal values and tolerant rhetoric; the problems of the EU’s existence within its current borders, aggravated after the UK’s secession from the Union; and the phenomenon of “illiberal democracy” as one of the most dangerous challenges facing the constitutional development of the countries of Central and Eastern Europe, especially Hungary and Poland. Special attention is paid to democratic backsliding, seen in the steady decline in rankings of post-socialist countries in various ratings of democratic accountability. The paper draws a conclusion about the general crisis that democratic statehood is experiencing on the European continent today and which is perhaps the most serious since the late 1930s. Also addressed is the broader use of various forms of direct democracy, beginning with nationwide and local referendums and ending with various types of plebiscites on confidence. A relatively new form of popular governance has been introduced by deliberative (consultative) democracy, for example in the case of Ireland’s Citizens’ Assembly, which is chosen by random selection and as vox populi gives parliamentary committees recommendations on the most acute and divisive social problems. The volume also illuminates rightist governments’ social-economic policies repudiating the 1990s’ widely accepted concept of the market’s invisible hand and relying on direct payments to the population (as in Poland’s “500+” program, Covid payments, and so on). The Polish case is separately examined, particularly in the context of the so-called ‘war’ with the Constitutional tribunal.