Abstrakt
During the times of an unpredictable calamity, when a force majeure brings uncertainty into the matters of a caught-off-guard state and puts the rigidity of the legal system to the trial, the agility in the adoption of remedial measures is often being promoted among the top values of those in charge. It is then that the laws written at a different time and for very different circumstances may seem to stop serving their purpose and the urgent need for an efficient, if one-off, solution prevails over the strict application of the conventional law-making principles.
Such events, which can be generally referred to as the "black swans", thus create an opportunity for the conjunction of the executive and legislative powers, or eventually an intervention of either power into the sphere of another. Amidst the COVID-19 crisis, the course of unprecedented events gave an impulse for this "extremis malis, extrema remedia" approach to be tested whole-scale.
It was during these times that a series of single-use ad hoc laws and pieces of subsidiary legislation were adopted to minimalize the scope of damages caused by the pandemic. It comes as no surprise that some of these acts were challenged before the court, with some lawsuits making it to the Constitutional Court itself.
While every country dealt with the situation in a somehow different way depending upon the specifics of each legal system and chosen crisis resolution tactic, the fundamental pattern is similar enough to be demonstrated on one jurisdiction. In the presented chapter, the characteristics and controversies of the aforementioned legislative technique are broken down and analysed predominantly based on the case study of crisis legislation adopted in the Czech Republic and its judiciary review in a broader context of the historically established case law.