Institutional Communication as a Means to Strengthen the Legitimacy of Constitutional Courts

Abstract

The legitimacy of constitutional and supreme courts increasingly requires an effort, by the courts themselves, to establish a channel for direct communication with the public. This paper briefly analyses the practices that some courts (the Supreme Courts of the United Kingdom and the United States, the French Constitutional Council, the German, Italian and Spanish Constitutional Courts) have developed for this purpose, highlighting the growing importance of new instruments that are allowing the courts to bypass the intermediation of traditional information media. In this respect, the Internet has played a key role; however, in the near future, the main instrument is most likely to be social media.