Konstituciniai principai ir Konstitucijos tekstas

Abstract

This is the first of the two consequent articles dealing with the typology and the system of the constitutional principles. It provides with the concept of constitutional principles and their peculiarities in the context of the legal principles, as such, as well as with the interrelationship between constitutional aprinciples, on the one side, and constitutional norms, the text of the Constitution, constitutional jurisprudence, and constitutional doctrine, on the other. The author argues that the analysis of the specific constitutional principles must be based not on the statutory law but on the interpretation of the text of the Constitution as provided in the constitutional doctrine(s) generated in the jurisprudence of the Constitutional Court. He also shows that such approach leads to even more fundamental theoretical conclusions as it compels to treat the law not as a system of norms but as a system of principles and norms.
The analysis is based on the theoretical assumption that constitutional law is different from all other fields of law, it cannot be considered as a branch of law but as a law above all the branches of statutory law. It is suggested to view constitutional law not only as a substitute for the unduly forgotten state law, and to rehabilitate the latter as one of the branches of statutory law.