Unpacking the Politics of Legal Advice-Giving in the Baltics, Moldova, Ukraine, and Russia in 2000s-2020s

Objective

PLEA explores the politics of legal advice-giving by examining the impact of the Council of Europe’s framework on constitutional democracy-making in Eastern Europe. Legal scholars argue the crucial role of the Council of Europe’s specialized expert bodies in democracy-making and fostering constitutional change in Eastern Europe. The Venice Commission (European Commission for Democracy through Law), an institutionalized body of legal expertise, is seen to be ‘guardian of democracy’ and ‘transnational legal order’-maker ensuring the quality of democratic governance in the region. As I argued in a recent op-ed, the practice of constitutional law advice-giving has thoroughly influenced legislative change in Ukraine among other Council of Europe member states. Surprisingly and unlike with the reception of ECtHR (European Court of Human Rights) case law , empirical political studies have not systematically examined cross-country variations in the reception of the Venice Commission decision-making or traced the impacts of its politics of legal advice-giving. The PLEA project fills the lacuna and offers a framework for operationalizing and measuring the politics of legal advice-giving in the region. The project adopts a comparative analytical lens and couples the analysis of apparent ‘success’ stories of the alignment with Council of Europe-upheld framework of constitutional democracy (Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania) with country-cases where this relationship has been more complicated or outright problematic (Moldova, Ukraine, Russia) over time. PLEA is innovative in combining thorough data collection with a nuanced analysis of the state-of-play of the politics of legal change. It contributes to empirical political studies, area studies, law and politics scholarships.