The Croatian Constitutional Court: From a potentially powerful court to a court of rejections

The creation of the Croatian Constitutional Court (CrCC) in 1990 marked a new era in Croatian constitutional history. Giving the newly established Court the power of judicial review changed its relationship vis-à-vis the legislator and paved a way for an ‘independent and potentially powerful court’. The present chapter explores empirically and systematically the decisions of the CrCC from the period of its creation in 1990 until 2020 to assess to what extent the decisions of the CrCC constrained the room for manoeuvre of the legislative power in Croatia. The analysis shows that while the Court has moved from a careful, self-restraining approach that dominated its practice in the 1990s to a more activist approach, the influence of the Court over the legislator has been, at best, only average. With as much as three-fourths of all the Croatian Constitutional Court’s rulings ending in rejection and with the Court leaving the legislator considerable room to manoeuvre, it seems that the CrCC has not lived up to the expectations to become ‘a potentially powerful court’. Yet, as I discuss in the chapter, the growing trend of dissenting opinions in recent years and greater ideological differences among the judges could potentially change the Court’s position vis-à-vis the legislative branch in the future.