Constitutionality of Emergency Measures under the Public Health Protection Act
The inability of the public authorities to effectively confront all emergency situations and the exposure of citizens to potentially arbitrary actions of the uncontrolled emergency government are not only two unacceptable extremes, but also two nightmares of every constitutionalist. This article answers four consecutive research questions concerning the problems of the regulation regarding emergency government, which tend to move the Czech legal system away from an ideal compromise rather towards any of the aforementioned extremes. The authors offer four important conclusions: (a) in principle, it is not possible to construct models of emergency government outside the constitutional framework unless it fulfills seven additional requirements; (b) in the light of these seven requirements, there is not a difference between constitutionally anchored states of emergency on the one hand, and the statutory emergency government outside the constitutional states of emergency on the other; (c) the current constitutional regulation of the states of emergency is problematic regarding both, the efficiency of the emergency decision making, and the lack of control mechanisms, making these states of emergency rather useless; (d) irrespective of the issues of the current constitutional emergency regulation, the provision of the Public Health Protection Act enabling the enactment of emergency measures is both, constitutionally problematic, and potentially abusable.