The limits of the constitutional court control over the judicial authority: Some open questions

In most states that have a centralized system of constitutional control, there is tension in the relations between the Constitutional Court and ordinary courts. The fundamental question raised in this regard is weather the Constitutional Court, acting on a constitutional complaint, may enter into the domain of application of law. The manner and conditions for exercising the constitutional rights are regulated by the law. In this respect, it seems that the Constitutional Court may, to a certain extent, examine the legal shortcomings of a court decision in order to substantively assess the alleged violation of the specific constitutional right stipulated in the constitutional complaint. The legal attitudes formulated by the Constitutional Court of Serbia clearly show that the Constitutional Court has exercised self-restraint in this area. The Constitutional Court can act only in cases of gross violation of procedural and substantive law. However, the analysis of Constitutional Court decisions as well as the separate opinions of constitutional court judges shows that the self-restraint of the Constitutional Court has not been consistently applied in each particular case. The problem of the relations between the Constitutional Court and ordinary courts must necessarily be viewed in a broader constitutional context and cannot be solved at the normative level only.