President of the Constitutional Court of Armenia, Gagik Harutyunyan, was hosted by the American University of Armenia, answered the questions of the students and presented his work “Constitutional Culture: The Lessons of History and the Challenges of Time”. To the question that the constitutional amendments were adopted on 6 December 2015, so whether the constitutional amendments are progressive or revolutionary by their nature, and which are the challenges by the new Constitution, Mr. Harutyunyan gave a theoretical and a completely deviated answer, “The Constitutional culture is less studied in the international practice … it is extremely important to understand why a constitutional culture, what is culture, after all, we are dealing with difference directions of culture…”
To the question of which reality we are living in, the CC President responded as follows: “Years ago, I used to say that we have a Constitution but not Constitutionalism, we have a Parliament but not parliamentarism, we have courts but not jurisdiction, this is a reality, and this reality continues, and it could be continued with much deeper paces if not for this initiative on constitutional reforms.”
Mr. Harutyunyan told that a task was placed before the RA President, they will work as unconstraint specialists, whether the President will accept it, it is his problem, if not, it is also his problem. “When I introduced the concept of constitutional reforms for the first time, many people were shocked, actually, it was the correct diagnosis of the reality, no treatment is possible without the diagnosis, and the diagnosis is as follows: a deep deficit of constitutionality has generated, the Constitution is cut off from reality and this had to be overcome.” Mr. Harutyunyan also noted that the main part of the provisions of the new Constitution will come into force in 2018, and it will fully function in 2020.
