Abstract
Democratic participation is one of the bases of the Rule of Law and thus should be found throughout all the branches of the State, including the judicial one. One of the ways to measure this kind of participation could be through analyzing the possibilities of citizens to access their constitutional courts. This access can be direct or indirect, individual or collective, and could differ within the different countries. The following paper aims to analyze the indirect participation of citizens in the Constitutional courts of Germany, Brazil and France. At the end, it will be notice that the element of democratic participation is usually conflicting with the efficiency of the work in the courts. Furthermore, it is remarkable that some of the internal designs of the courts, made for ensuring this kind of participation, are often neglected by the courts’ internal regulations.
Keywords:
constitutional courts; judicial review; third-party interventions; public audiences; comparative law