The Global Expansion Of Judicial Power

Political scientists and legal scholars of various ideological perspectives trace the intellectual origins of the trend toward the judicialization of politics and the increasing domination of decision- making arenas by quasi-judicial procedures, looking at conditions that promote or retard judicialization in specific countries including Western common-law democracies, European Romano-Germanic democracies, and rapidly changing nations such as Russia and Namibia. Contains papers from a June 1992 meeting, plus other papers. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

In Russia, as the confrontation over the constitutional distribution of authority raged, Boris Yeltsin's economic program regularly wended its way in and out of the Constitutional Court until Yeltsin finally suspended that court in the aftermath of his clash with the hard-line parliament. In Europe, French and German legislators and executives now routinely alter desired policies in response to or in anticipation of the pronouncements of constitutional courts. In Latin America and Africa, courts are--or will be-- important participants in ongoing efforts to establish constitutional rules and policies protect new or fragile democracies from the threats of military intervention, ethnic conflict, and revolution. This global expansion of judicial power, or judicialization of politics is accompanied by an increasing domination of negotiating or decision making arenas by quasi- judicial procedures. For better or for worse, the judicialization of politics has become one of the most significant trends of the end of the millenium. In this book, political scientists, legal scholars, and judges around the world trace the intellectual origins of this trend, describe its occurence--or lack of occurence--in specific nations, analyze the circumstances and conditions that promote or retard judicialization, and evaluate the phenomenon from a variety of intellectual and ideological perspectives.

The main aim of this volume is to analyse common issues arising from increasing judicial power in the context of different political and legal systems, including those in North America, Africa, Europe, Australia, and Asia.

This is one of the few book-length analyses of judicial review and public policy in very different parts of the world today. Donald W. Jackson and C. Neal Tate have gathered together respected scholars and set forth a framework for comparative analysis into the origins of judicial review, its use as a policy tool, and its exercise and impact in the policy-making process. Political scientists, public policy analysts, and public administrators will find this a thought-provoking study in comparative politics and public administration and a useful classroom text. The text opens with an overview and a delineation of basic concepts and closes with a framework for analyzing the exercise of judicial review in policy making. The major part of the book offers case studies and analyses of the establishment of judicial review as a policy tool, and the impact of judicial review in various types of legal situations. These studies cover twelve countries, including the United States, Great Britain, Japan, India, Israel, and the USSR, among others. Chapter reference lists and a selected bibliography at the end of the book refer readers to current studies of importance.

The decisions courts make in constitutional rights cases pervade our political life and touch on our most basic interests and values. The spread of judicial review of legislation around the world means that courts are increasingly called on to settle matters of moral and political controversy, including assisted suicide, data privacy, anti-terrorism measures, marriage, and abortion. But doubts regarding the institutional capacities of courts for deciding such questions are growing. Judges now regularly review social science research to assess whether a law will effectively achieve its aim, and at what cost to other interests. They cite studies and statistical information from psychology, sociology, medicine, and other disciplines in which they are rarely trained. This empirical reasoning proceeds alongside open-ended moral reasoning, with judges employing terms such as equality, liberty, and autonomy, then determining what these require in concrete circumstances. This book shows that courts were not designed for this kind of moral and empirical reasoning. It argues that in comparison to legislatures, the institutional capacities of courts are deficient. Legislatures are better equipped than courts for deliberating and decision-making in regard to the kinds of factual and moral issues that arise in constitutional rights cases. The book concludes by considering the implications of comparative institutional capacity for constitutional design. Is a system of judicial review of legislation something that constitutional framers should choose to adopt? If so, in what form? For countries with systems of judicial review, practical proposals are made to remedy deficiencies in the institutional capacities of courts.

Explores the relationship between the legitimacy, the efficacy, and the decision-making of national and transnational constitutional courts.

The rapid spread of judicially-enforced constitutional rights has been one of the most dramatic developments in modern law. This book argues that there is now a global model for how such rights should function, and develops an original, philosophically grounded, account of their nature and scope.

To what extent should the doctrine of the separation of powers evolve in light of recent shifts in constitutional design and practice? Constitutions now often include newer forms of rights – such as socioeconomic and environmental rights – and are written with an explicitly transformative purpose. They also often reflect include new independent bodies such as human rights commissions and electoral tribunals whose position and function within the traditional structure is novel. The practice of the separation of powers has also changed, as the executive has tended to gain power and deliberative bodies like legislatures have often been thrown into a state of crisis. The chapters in this edited volume grapple with these shifts and the ways in which the doctrine of the separation of powers might respond to them. It also asks whether the shifts that are taking place are mostly a product of the constitutional systems of the global south, or instead reflect changes that run across most liberal democratic constitutional systems around the world.