„DOSTOJANSTVO“ USTAVA JUGOSLAVIJE IZ 1974. GODINE

Although the growth of constitutional matter is a general trend, the dignity of the constitution was grossly violated by the 1974 Constitution of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. By completely neglecting the need to draft a carefully measured text of the most important act in the legal system of the country, the authors of the Constitution led to its essential discreditation, in addition to other, more important, political problems that this document produced. The extensiveness of the Constitution is one of the more serious obstacles that the framers of the constitution put in front of their constitutional “offspring”, which has yet to “make it first steps” and prove its political and social expediency and justification. Properly set limits of constitutional reach in matters of public authority and fundamental rights and freedoms represent an object of the care for the dignity of the constitution. The 1974 Constitution is one of the most exhaustive and comprehensive constitutions ever written. Primarily because of this, it found its place in the history not only domestic, but also of the global constitutionalism (obviously, not for good reason). If in the complex political circumstances of the Socialist Yugoslavia one could not expect a laconic, concise constitutional document, by compromising the principle of the dignity of the constitution, the Constitution went down on the scale of comparative and historical legal comparison of the highest legal acts of independent states. Every constitution should be characterized by the conciseness of its wordings. The basis for this concern is the consideration for the solemnity of the constitution-making historical moment and care for the opportunities and risks of the constitution’s application. However, the 1974 Constitution made a wide encroachment on the topics which, at some places in the document, do not even reach the level for the legislative regulation. The ineffective protection of the highest constitutional values, which followed relatively soon after the adoption of the 1974 Constitution, represents a logical consequence of the lack of a good constitution-writing measure as the essential basic feature of the last Constitution of Socialist Yugoslavia.