Constitutional Jurisdictions in the ICT Revolution: Looking for legitimacy through communication

The article discusses the growing importance of the communication of constitutional and supreme courts with public opinion and how new technologies are transforming this relationship. It highlights the need for an empirical analysis of court communication, due to the scarcity of norms regulating these activities. The author examines the generators. The object, the tools, and the recipients of the communication of 27 constitutional jurisdictions worldwide. The research was conducted using three types of tools. First, an examination of the courts’ websites and social media platforms. Secondly, a dedicated questionnaire was submitted from scholars of the respective jurisdictions. Finally, the publications on the subject were considered, although they are rather limited and sporadic. The main findings of the research are that in the last fifteen years, almost all the analysed courts have changed their communication strategies. In many cases, these changes have been promoted by some prominent chief justices, and they covered both the communication tools (there was a shift from communication through websites and press releases to social networks), its content (which extended from judicial to extrajudicial activities, and especially to the promotion of constitutional literacy), and the recipients of the communication (which are more and more the general public). It concludes by discussing the reasons for this change, the risks, and the potentialities it involves, especially in the context of the democratic backsliding that many democracies are experiencing. The tendency of the courts to resort to extrajudicial activities to promote the constitution is a symptomatic element of a gap in constitutional democracy, i.e., the need to strengthen the instruments to promote the constitution, including through educational and institutional innovations, a gap that should be taken seriously and addressed by scholars.