Statutory Court of Klaipėda region: preconditions of its establishment and legal status.

Lithuanian lawyers allot more and more attention to the analysis of the constitutional status of the Constitutional Court of the Republic of Lithuania. Those examinations reveal the problems of formation of the doctrines of constitutional justice as well as the perspectives of improvement of the activities of the Constitutional Court. And it is not accidental that scientists' attention towards the Constitutional Court increases. While studying urgent problems regarding implementation of the Constitution of the Republic of Lithuania one may reveal not only the development of constitutional justice but also more general laws of the Lithuanian constitutional system. However, one cannot leave unmentioned that not enough attention is paid to legal phenomena of the Lithuania between two World Wars, and, to be more precise, to development of the doctrine of constitutional review. Politically and legally acknowledging the continuity of the Republic of Lithuania, it is impossible not to look back at the past and not to appreciate those phenomena which influenced the concept of the now functioning Constitutional Court. One of those phenomena was the Statutory Court of Klaipėda region. The Law on the establishment of that institution was promulgated on 13 March 1935. True, while evaluating the legal status of the Statutory Court, one cannot avoid confronting a more general problem, i.e. the urgent issues of the interaction between the Constitution of the Republic of Lithuania and the Statute of Klaipėda region. In this context one may consider differently the legal origin of the Statutory Court, however, in all cases one has to underline that for the first time in the history of Lithuania a possibility was created to examine the lawfulness of a legal act. The Statutory Court had to determine if legal acts of the Republic of Lithuania and those of the institutions of Klaipėda region were in conformity with the Statute of Klaipėda region. The author assents to the conclusion made by Lithuanian scientists between two World Wars that the Statute of Klaipėda region was a constituent part of the Lithuanian constitutional system. With regard to this there are preconditions to assert that the assessment of legal acts concerning their compliance with the Statute was the constitutional problem of these acts as well. Thus, when examining the urgent problems of constitutionality, one has to take into account that already in the Lithuania between two World Wars there were legal phenomena which were approaching the conception of traditional constitutional justice. Due to political reasons the Statutory Court did not really start functioning. However, passing of the Law on the Statutory Court and the conception of the Court formulated therein meant that in Lithuania of that time the question of constitutionality of legal acts was already urgent.Lietuvos teisininkai vis daugiau dėmesio skiria Lietuvos Respublikos Konstitucinio Teismo konstituciniam statusui. Tyrimuose atskleidžiamos konstitucinės justicijos doktrinos formavimosi problemos, Konstitucinio Teismo veiklos tobulinimo perspektyvos. Mokslininkai Konstituciniam Teismui daugiau dėmesio skiria neatsitiktinai. Lietuvos Respublikos Konstitucijos įgyvendinimo aktualijų studijos atskleidžia ne tik konstitucinės justicijos raidą, bet ir bendresnius Lietuvos konstitucinės sistemos dėsnius. Tačiau negalima nepasakyti, kad tarpukario Lietuvos teisiniams reiškiniams, o konkrečiau – konstitucinės kontrolės doktrinos brendimui, skiriama nepakankamai dėmesio. Politiškai ir teisiškai pripažįstant Lietuvos Respublikos tęstinumą, negalima neatsigręžti į praeitį, neįvertinti tų reiškinių, kurie darė įtaką šiuo metu veikiančio Konstitucinio Teismo koncepcijai