Moldova's Article 41 piques my curiosity from the standpoint of political philosophy (not a forte of mine by any means.) Here in the U.S. we have our three branches of government and checks and balances from the federal level down to local governments (for the most part.) As a separate entity there's a deep infrastructure of law which informs "rule of law." Article 41 seems to mingle these, maybe as a short cut for a constitution created with the knowledge that the country would be fighting corruption from the start.
I may just forward a question or two to the few political scientists that I kind of know, in case they've ever looked into the European side of things.
Hey Connie, if any of your political scientist friends get back to you with some thoughts let me know!
For my part, I would view this as a mechanism of checks and balances designed for a different state structure than the US. The authors of the US constitution did not envision political parties and (contrary to what the Supreme Court may think) did not outline the "personhood" of companies and legal entities. Impeachment and charges of treason therefore are meant to be against a person rather than an entity. In the Moldovan system parties are much stronger and through party lists outline who is in Parliament, etc. In a sense we've seen a kind of "impeachment" of a party here.
Now that's a wildly imperfect comparison. The US constitution has clear remedies for high crimes and misdemeanors (impeachment) while the Constitutional Court in Moldova had to figure out what to do with some party that violated this clause without explicit guidance.
All that said, at the core this is a constitution protecting itself. Any party or group attempting to overthrow the constitution is not legal. Most likely it was designed to apply to new party formation (e.g. no one can register the "Party of Dissolving Moldova"). But the intention seems to be there as well .
Moldova's Article 41 piques my curiosity from the standpoint of political philosophy (not a forte of mine by any means.) Here in the U.S. we have our three branches of government and checks and balances from the federal level down to local governments (for the most part.) As a separate entity there's a deep infrastructure of law which informs "rule of law." Article 41 seems to mingle these, maybe as a short cut for a constitution created with the knowledge that the country would be fighting corruption from the start.
I may just forward a question or two to the few political scientists that I kind of know, in case they've ever looked into the European side of things.
Hey Connie, if any of your political scientist friends get back to you with some thoughts let me know!
For my part, I would view this as a mechanism of checks and balances designed for a different state structure than the US. The authors of the US constitution did not envision political parties and (contrary to what the Supreme Court may think) did not outline the "personhood" of companies and legal entities. Impeachment and charges of treason therefore are meant to be against a person rather than an entity. In the Moldovan system parties are much stronger and through party lists outline who is in Parliament, etc. In a sense we've seen a kind of "impeachment" of a party here.
Now that's a wildly imperfect comparison. The US constitution has clear remedies for high crimes and misdemeanors (impeachment) while the Constitutional Court in Moldova had to figure out what to do with some party that violated this clause without explicit guidance.
All that said, at the core this is a constitution protecting itself. Any party or group attempting to overthrow the constitution is not legal. Most likely it was designed to apply to new party formation (e.g. no one can register the "Party of Dissolving Moldova"). But the intention seems to be there as well .