ABSTRACT
This chapter evaluates whether Constitutional Courts should be considered legal actors simply enforcing what is written by political actors in statutes and constitutions, or institutional actors with a predominantly political nature, determining what the law should say. It makes no pretensions on providing any final words either in the discussion on judicial activism or in respect of the relations between the legal and political worlds in general. In light of the debate on judicial activism at the constitutional level, i.e., involvement of Constitutional Courts in political law-making, it has investigated the issue of whether such courts should be considered primarily legal or political actors. After having pointed out the reasons why Constitutional Courts in established Western democracies can be seen as being legal actors, but with strong ties to the political arena, the central argument of the chapter has been on why one should normatively impose upon these courts the label of ‘legal actors’, though they play a political function.
