Judicial Control

Judicial control of public power ensures a guarantee of the rule of law. This book addresses the scope and limits of judicial control at the national level, i.e. the control of public authorities, and at the supranational level, i.e. the control of States. It explores the risk of judicial review leading to judicial activism that can threaten the principle of the separation of powers or the legitimate exercise of state powers. It analyzes how national and supranational legal systems have embodied certain mechanisms, such as the principles of reasonableness, proportionality, deference and margin of appreciation, as well as the horizontal effects of human rights that help to determine how far a judge can go. Taking a theoretical and comparative view, the book first examines the conceptual bases of the various control systems and then studies the models, structural elements, and functions of the control instruments in selected countries and regions. It uses country and regional reports as the basis for the comparison of the convergences and divergences of the implementation of control in certain countries of Europe, Latin America, and Africa. The book’s theoretical reflections and comparative investigations provide answers to important questions, such as whether or not there are nascent universal principles concerning the control of public power, how strong the impact of particular legal traditions is, and to what extent international law concepts have had harmonizing and strengthening effects on internal public-power control.

A unique collaboration between academic scholars, legal practitioners, and arbitrators, this handbook focuses on the intersection of arbitration - as an alternative to litigation - and the court systems to which arbitration is ultimately beholden. The first three parts analyze issues relating to the interpretation of the scope of arbitration agreements, arbitrator bias and conflicts of interest, arbitrator misconduct during the proceedings, enforceability of arbitral awards, and the grounds for vacating awards. The next section features fifteen country-specific reviews, which demonstrate that, despite the commonality of principles at the international level, there is a significant of amount of differences in the application of those principles at the national level. This work should be read by anyone interested in the general rules and principles of the enforceability of foreign arbitral awards and the grounds for courts to vacate or annul such awards.

The development of the judicial control of the European Communities is perhaps best illustrated by comparing the first decision the Court of Justice rendered in December 1954, under the ECSC Treaty, with its preliminary rulings van Gend & Loos (1962), ENEL (1964) and Simmenthal II (1978) rendered under the EEC Treaty. In the first case the Court quashed a decision of the High Authority impugned by an annulment action of a Member State for an illegal exercise of Community powers - a judicial control which at the time already represented a spectacular legal in novation introduced by the ECSC Treaty. At that time the Court was, for evident reasons, still reserved as to its role within the unprecedented institutional structure of the Community. In van Gend, ENEL and Simmenthal II, on the other hand, the Court resolutely pursued a judicial policy intended to ensure an effective operation of the Community legal order, a problem hardly envisaged in 1954. In these rulings the Court characterized the emerging legal order and stated its fundamental and indispensable requirements: the unlimited supremacy of Community law and its direct effect. The development of a superior and autonomous Community legal order was finally completed by the Court's recognition of fundamental Communiry rights of individuals. This development from an initially reserved stand of the Court searching for its proper role and its potentialities to a bold and determined judicial policy is truly remarkable.

Collection of articles on legal aspects and control of the administration of justice in the USA and examination of major aspects of the relationship between agencies of economic administration and other forms of public administration and courts of law - includes relevant jurisprudence.

This seminal book presents a fundamental reconsideration of modern American administrative law. According to Christopher Edley, the guiding principle in this field is that courts should apply legal doctrines to control the discretion of unelected bureaucrats. In practice, however, these doctrines simply give unelected judges largely unconstrained--and inescapable--discretion. Assessed on its own terms, says Edley, administrative law is largely a failure. He discussed why and how this is so and argues that law should abandon its obsession with bureaucratic discretion and pursue instead the direct promotion of sound governance. Edley demonstrates that legal analyses of separation of powers and of judicial oversight of agencies implicitly use three decision-making paradigms: politics, scientific expertise, and adjudicatory fairness. Conventional wisdom maintains, for example, that judges should hesitate to question the political choices of legislators and the expertise of administrators, but need not be so deferential in addressing questions of law. Such judicial efforts to police governance have largely failed because, as Edley shows in several contexts, they attempt to appraise decision-making paradigms as though they were separable when in fact the important decisions of both judges and political officials combine elements of politics, science, and fairness. According to Edley, unsustainable boundaries among these paradigms cannot be a satisfactory basis for deciding when a court should interfere. Law must stop focusing on separation of powers and instead direct attention to such issues as bureaucratic incompetence, systemic agency delay, and political bias.