In addition to its principal functions of reviewing the constitutionality of laws and monitoring the proper conduct of elections and referendums, the Constitutional Council also has jurisdiction to adjudicate upon specified legal situations in other areas. Constitutional review Acts of Parliament are subject to constitutional review before they take effect. A statute that is found unconstitutional cannot be promulgated. A statute found to be partially unconstitutional may nevertheless be promulgated if its unconstitutional provisions have not been declared unseverable. The President of the Republic may also require it to be given a further reading in Parliament.
Constitutional review rests on the application of parameters to which laws are required to conform.
These parameters together constitute what has often been termed le bloc de constitutionnalite - the Constitution proper and its preamble, which itself makes reference to the Declaration of Human and Civic Rights of 1789 and to the preamble to the 1946 Constitution. These fundamental principles are significant principles consistently found in republican legislation enacted before the entry into force of the Constitution of the Fourth Republic. They include freedom of association, individual freedom, freedom of conscience, respect for due process, freedom of education, the independence of university teachers, the jurisdiction and independence of the administrative courts and the role of the judiciary as guardian of individual property rights. In 1973, in a decision relating to the 1974 Finance Act, the Council also established the principle of equality before the law as contained in the 1789 Declaration. Adherence to this principle has frequently been monitored since then.