A Shoulder to Lean on: Societal Perception of the Constitutional Court Between 1962-1964

Abstract

Shortly after the Turkish Constitutional Court began operating in 1962, a newspaper article appeared titled “The Constitutional Court Is Not a Wishing Well.” The article complained about individuals submitting petitions to the Court who had no right of direct access. This study treats these petitions as texts revealing how society had perceived the newly established Constitutional Court. The central questions of the study ask why individuals who lacked direct access to the Court nevertheless petitioned it and what meanings they attributed to the Court through these petitions. To answer these questions, the article examines 240 petitions which individuals had submitted between 1962-1964 and which the Constitutional Court had dismissed for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction or standing. The study analyzes these petitions through the concept of legal consciousness, which focuses on how ordinary people perceive and understand the law, as well as engage in legal mobilization. The study has coded the decisions based on the summaries of the applicants’ requests as contained in the Court’s judgments. The findings show the applicants to have perceived the Constitutional Court not just as an institution of constitutional review but to have also imagined it as a higher authority that could provide relief, review administrative acts and judicial decisions, respond to petitions, and remedy personal grievances. In this respect, the article contributes to the literature on constitutional adjudication by examining the social perception of the Constitutional Court in its founding years from a law and society perspective.