The Principle of Equality in the Jurisprudence of the Constitutional Council. What Are the Prospects for the Priority Issue of Constitutionality?

The article deals with the actual problems of applying the principle of equality by the Constitutional Council of France. The author analyzes the sources of law that the constitutional judge uses to define the concept of equality. Based on the material of the key decisions of the 1970s and 2000s, the peculiarities of the Constitutional Council’s interpretation of the principle of equality are studied. The conclusion is made about the consistent nature of this interpretation and the careful application of the principle of equality in constitutional disputes. This emphasizes the dual legal nature of equality: an independent fundamental right and the conditions for the exercise of other fundamental rights. There are two levels of monitoring of compliance with the principle of equality by the legislator, depending on the form of normative fixing of differences in treatment. Special attention is paid to the relatively new procedure of constitutional control a posteriori for the French legal system, which is related to the priority issue of constitutionality. According to the author, it plays an important role in the development of the rule of law, since it provides a practical implementation of the principle of equality in a modern democratic society.