Editorial: the new Chancellor of Justice sounds sweet and thinks sound

Photo: Sander Ilvest / Postimees

Not known by jurists alone, Ülle Madise is recognised by radio audience and readers of newspapers.

No prior Chancellor of Justice has been so widely known before entering office. The sweet sound and sound reasoning of Ms Madise, a constitutional law professor at University of Tartu, is familiar to all happening to hear «Vanamehed kolmandalt» via Radio KUKU.

As also observed by the listeners, Ms Madise does possess a valuable yet regrettably rare quality: voicing plain and understandable questions on complex issues. With playful ease, she is able to bring out the core or what the debating parties are trying to say – briefly and pointedly capturing what pages upon pages have been filled to pontificate about.

The up-to-now career, a mix of offices academic and related to the state, made Ms Madise a remarkably befitting candidate for the post. While also up as an option the last time in 2007, the following seven years have spiced Ms Madise’s career by professorship at Tallinn University of Technology and University of Tartu, as well as service as legal adviser to the President. Obviously, both aspects – theory and practice, say – served to shape her into a candidate more formidable.

In Estonia, the jobs of President and Chancellor of Justice partially overlap. The President shall assess constitutionality of an Act before proclaiming it and, finding fault, sends it back to the Riigikogu. Naturally, the President is not tearing his hair alone at the office, attempting to understand if such and such provision fits the spirit and letter of Constitution. Rather, he has advisers to help out.

The Chancellor of Justice can contest any piece of legislation – be it from Riigikogu, the Government of the Republic of a local government – should she find it to contradict the Constitution of other law. Unlike the President, she may also do that after the event. Such is the Chancellor of Justice role since the 1992 Constitution entered into force. In 1999, Chancellor of Justice was added the role of ombudsman – the middleman to intervene when bureaucrats act arbitrarily towards a citizen.

For years, the sworn advocate and an author of the Constitution Jüri Raidla has claimed there is no more need for a Chancellor of Justice as the framework for Estonia’s legal order has been completed and, to contest constitutionality, Supreme Court could manage without the mediation. Thus, the Chancellor of Justice ought to only retain the role of an ombudsman.

The issue then being: who, whether and how could contest the unconstitutionality of legislation, and if – like some other nations – we would need a separate constitutional court.

Clear, by now, is that on March 10^th Ülle Madise starts out as Chancellor of Justice, the essence thereof prescribed by the current Constitution and law.