the Constitution and place in the context of the legal system also inevitably affect the
control exercised by the Constitutional Court. That is to say, the legislator’s freedom
of action in regulating a specific matter may be broader or narrower, and the
Constitutional Court has to determine whether the scope of the freedom of action
exercised by the Saeima conforms to the provisions of the Constitution (cf. Subparagraphs 15.2 and 15.3 of the Constitutional Court Judgment in the Case No. 200604-01 passed on 8 November 2006). Thus, the compliance of the provisions impugned
in this Case with the principle of protection of legitimate expectations and the
principle of proportionality should be determined in the context of Article 109 of the
Constitution.
Concerning Article 91 of the Constitution, the Constitutional Court repeatedly stated
that, when ascertaining whether any legal provision of the Law on State Pensions
contradicts to the principle of equality, one has to take into account the legal area that
the impugned provision falls into. The principle of equality usually applies along with
other fundamental rights – especially because often one cannot adjudicate a case on
the basis of this principle alone. The rights established in Article 91 of the Constitution
are “relative”, namely, although they stipulate equal treatment, by themselves they do
not reveal the nature of this treatment, i.e. whether it should be favourable or
unfavourable. In order to arrive at one of these outcomes, one should take into account
other considerations outside the limits of the principle of equality (cf., e.g., Paragraph
5 and Sub-paragraph 6.1 of the Constitutional Court Judgment in the Case No. 200508-01 passed on 11 November 2005 and Paragraph 15 of the Constitutional Court
Judgment in the Case No. 2006-04-01 passed on 8 November 2006).
Furthermore, the Constitutional Court stated that the rights to receive pension
disbursements are deemed as property rights in the understanding of Article 105 of the
Constitution. However, when determining the compliance of a legal provision to the
article in question, one has to take into account whether the case is related to the area
of social rights. If the case is related to this area, it should at the same time be taken
into account that the rights and legal interests of the submitter of the Application
cannot be protected to the same extent as they would be protected in the case of
restriction of property rights in their “classic” understanding (cf. Paragraphs 20 and
28
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