ON THE CONSTITUTIONAL IDENTITY OF THE REPUBLIC OF SRPSKA
Abstract
This paper is dedicated to determining which components make up the constitutional identity of the Republika Srpska (RS). The basic theoretical and methodological approach is based on the study of the text of the 1992 Constitution of RS, which has an unusually long life, but whose total revision has recently been officialy announced. The aim of the research is to attempt to identify the elements of the constitutional identity of the RS, in accordance with the instructions of theorists regarding what the notion of constitutional identity represents. The paper identifies certain comparative deficiencies in the authenticity of structure and content from which the Constitution of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BH) and the Constitution of RS suffer. Based on the analysis of the Constitution of the RS, the texts of relevant constitutional documents of BH and its formal and informal quasi-state predecessors, and the 1990 Constitution of the Republic of Serbia (the 1990 Constitution of Serbia), it is concluded that there are two central elements of the constitutional identity of the RS. These are the Serb national foundation of the RS and of its constitutional order, as well as the highly positioned autonomous status of the RS as one of the two constitutinal entities of BH. The paper establishes that less important, but certainly present, additional components of the constitutional identity of RS are its unitary order and the extinguished institutional role of its President within the constitutional framework of the RS. The conclusions of the research comprise the judgment that the Constitution of RS, although it has been frequently amended by the means of the interventions of the High Representative and of the Constitutional Court of the BH, has continued to contain the two centrefold elements, necessary for the identification of the constitutional identity of RS. Thus, RS has maintained the capacity for its constitutional self-identification, although in the third year of its implementation it has become an entity of BH, i.e. a part of a larger political and constitutional configuration. Elements of the constitutional identity of RS are clearly recognisible and sufficiently identifiable, although its constitutional beginnings were characterized by insufficient originality, when compared to the obvious role model of the Constitution of RS – the 1990 Constitution of Serbia.
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