Knowledge and understanding
After successfully mastering the course, students will be able to:
Determine, and distinguish between basic concepts of political systems that form the framework and operational arena for the application of constitutional law concepts in everyday political struggle, the output of which is legislation and other regulations.
On the basis of interdisciplinary study, students will be able to understand basic characteristics of sets of political theories and explanations of political process within the set limits of constitutional and public law. They will be able to determine and distinguish between basic politological concepts, such as power, authority, democracy, rule of law.
They will be able to recognise how these theories and concepts are used in political activities and efforts to realise provisions of constitutional law, such as the rule of law and of spearation of powers. They will be able to distinguish and explain concepts as they appear in everyday speech and siimple analyses of social phenomena.
They will be able to recognise the rationality behind various political institutions and sets of institutions. They will be trained to participate in constitutional law and legislative activity of drafting regulations. They will be able to recognise sophisms used in political activity. For example, understand and explain the frequently abused phrase "let the institutions do their job" or "the sin of the structures". To recognise ideological sophisms and misconceptions, such as the constant demands for "the principle of equal stomachs" as a basic norm of political marketing.
Explain: how the individual, politics and social community are interconnected in a system of balance of power and struggle for power; the scope of constitutional provisions and their revisions, and real influence of the constitution and legislation on individual behavior. The essence of political activity, as a struggle for distribution of social resources, and the relation between social institutions and structures to the balance of power in various systems of government. The important differences between semantic constitutionality of autocracy and normative constitutionality of modern democracies.
Application
To group and describe: Basic approaches in the analysis of comstitutional and political phenomena and processes, and to describe their differences on various examples. To adopt, apply and study the application of structural 'tests' as instructions to those applying the law. To understand the acquirements of the democratic transition processes, and development of European constitutionality.
To understand and interpret: Mechanisms that constantly produce and renew processes such as the struggle for power, and means of restricting these tendencies in political life. Restriction of all political institutions that can serve various political aims and forces. Scope and restrictions of constitutional norms in various social circumstances.
To apply the knowledge gained on an explanation of political processes, with the aim of preparing various applicable regulations.
Analysis
To demonstrate: the universality of phenomena such as the struggle for power, lack of respect for constitutional norms, monopolistic position of political parties, autocratic behaviour of their leaders, types of deviant behaviour such as corruption and nepotism, and difficulties connected with the changes to the legal system and its legal culture. Constitutional law concepts, and means of combating these phenomena as a basis for rational choice of means of suppression ('tools') on the constitutional law level.
To analyse: the internal logic behind the creation and functioning of political institutions. Types of constitutional law sets and models that are important for further analysis of causal relations, such as: checks and balances, judicial independence and its limits, restrictions of direct democracy, realisation of free access to information and so on, as well as the important role of legal institutions in these processes. Comparative achievements of "judicial dialogue" on the European and global scale.
To compare: Different approaches to political, legal and social phenomena. To compare commonsense and scientific explanation, knowledge and belief.
Synthesis
To construct an elementary explanation of political institutions using and comparing various theoretical approaches. To suggest the best ways to research a particular phenomenon.
Evaluation
To reexamine everyday occurences and place them within the scientific framework of constitutional law explanations.
To compare theoretical frameworks of explanation (political responsibility, freedom of opinion and expression) in explaining individual political and social institutions.
To evaluate: Advantages and disadvantages of individual methods for the normatisation of social phenomena and processes, and advantages and disadvantages of theoretical approaches in explaining various social phenomena.
To assess to what extent certain measures can provide answers to normative tasks, and to what extent certain theoretical frameworks enable elaboration of answers to formulated questions. In other words, to assess the applicability of the theoretical framework and methods applied to a specific phenomenon.
Knowledge is tested by seminars, mid-term examinations, written and oral examinations.
Midterm examination is a written form of testing in which the students have to demonstrate that they know how to define basic constitutional law and political concepts, reproduce the explanation of some basic political processes, group phenomena (for example, recognise the problem of minority integration in various contexts), compare concepts, their meaning and explanatory scope from the standpoint that every rule is intended for implementation, and to outline how a certain problem could be researched or explained by different theoretical frameworks for the purpose of regulation on constitutional law level.
A seminar paper is on the one hand focused on public presentation of the student's own text, in which students are expected to analyse a constitutional law case or problem, demonstrate its understanding, categorise it within the corpus of knowledge attained in classes, provide its synthetic presentation and finally evaluate it. Apart from this presentation, students also have to prepare a written seminar paper containing all of the aforementioned elements, which has to aim at the application of methods of scientific presentation and analysis, with strict referencing and interpretation of sources used.
