As previously mentioned in the articles of this series, the Constitutional Court released the first issue of its journal at the end of last year, dedicating it to the rulings and decisions issued since its establishment until the end of 2024; the rulings are those issued by the court in its role of monitoring the constitutionality of laws and regulations, while the decisions are issued by it when performing its other role, which is interpreting constitutional texts.
As mentioned in the tenth article of this series, the General Assembly of the Constitutional Court has required the Technical Office of the Court to derive legal principles from the Court's rulings and decisions, and has obligated it to facilitate the publication of these principles (Article 4/H of the Instructions of the Technical Office of the Constitutional Court).
In execution of this, the Technical Office derived legal principles from all rulings and decisions, and facilitated their publication by making them available on the Court's website and by including them at the beginning of each ruling or decision in the first issue of the court’s journal. Also, the Technical Office did not merely derive the principles but also followed up by referencing the related articles, under the title: "Principles’ Associations"; under this title, the office lists the numbers of these articles to facilitate referencing the principle by researchers and legal professionals.
However, it has been noted in some cases that “Principles’ Associations” did not include article numbers even though they are connected with the principle; for example, the Technical Office referenced several articles as associations for the legal principle derived from ruling number (1) for the year 2013, but it did not refer to the text challenged for unconstitutionality, which is the text of Article (5) from the Landlords and Tenants Law (p 13 from the first issue of the journal).
Although the Constitutional Court did not explicitly mention that article number in its ruling, the Technical Office could have addressed this and mentioned it in the “Principles’ Associations”; because it has the challenge file and its related documents, and because it is obligated- as previously mentioned- to derive legal principles from the Court's rulings and decisions.
Also, an issue in the organization of “Principles’ Associations” was apparent in the case of the legal principle derived from ruling number (6) for the year 2024, which did not include the Article (39) from the Agriculture Law; the article for which the court declared the unconstitutionality of a phrase within it in the referred ruling stating: "Since the phrase challenged for unconstitutionality is necessarily related to the phrase found in Article (39) of the same law… it must also be declared unconstitutional" (the ruling published in Official Gazette number 5937 dated July 16, 2024, and see p 486 from the first issue of the journal).
The previous examples indicate that “Associations” of legal principles have not been given proper consideration in several cases, necessitating thorough studies of the Court’s rulings and decisions to properly derive legal principles and define the articles associated with the principles accurately.
Therefore; to ensure better association of the principle with the relevant articles, it may be appropriate to entrust the Constitutional Court—or its president—the authority to approve the legal principles derived by the Technical Office from the Court's rulings and decisions; including defining the articles associated with those principles.
