Download or read book Constitutional Courts as Positive Legislators written by Allan R. Brewer-Carías and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2013-07-11 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In all democratic states, constitutional courts, which are traditionally empowered to invalidate or to annul unconstitutional statutes, have the role of interpreting and applying the Constitution in order to preserve its supremacy and to ensure the prevalence of fundamental rights. In this sense they were traditionally considered "negative legislators," unable to substitute the legislators or to enact legislative provisions that could not be deducted from the Constitution. During the past decade the role of constitutional courts has dramatically changed as their role is no longer limited to declaring the unconstitutionality of statutes or annulling them. Today, constitutional courts condition their decisions with the presumption of constitutionality of statutes, opting to interpret them according to or in harmony with the Constitution in order to preserve them, instead of deciding their annulment or declaring them unconstitutional. More frequently, Constitutional Courts, instead of dealing with existing legislation, assume the role of assistants or auxiliaries to the legislator, creating provisions they deduct from the Constitution when controlling the absence of legislation or legislative omissions. In some cases they act as "positive legislators," issuing temporary or provisional rules to be applied pending the enactment of legislation. This book analyzes this new role of the constitutional courts, conditioned by the principles of progressiveness and of prevalence of human rights, particularly regarding the important rediscovery of the right to equality and non-discrimination.
Download or read book Comparative Constitutional Reasoning written by András Jakab and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2017-04-27 with total page 867 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: To what extent is the language of judicial opinions responsive to the political and social context in which constitutional courts operate? Courts are reason-giving institutions, with argumentation playing a central role in constitutional adjudication. However, a cursory look at just a handful of constitutional systems suggests important differences in the practices of constitutional judges, whether in matters of form, style, or language. Focusing on independently-verified leading cases globally, a combination of qualitative and quantitative analysis offers the most comprehensive and systematic account of constitutional reasoning to date. This analysis is supported by the examination of eighteen legal systems around the world including the European Court of Human Rights and the European Court of Justice. Universally common aspects of constitutional reasoning are identified in this book, and contributors also examine whether common law countries differ to civil law countries in this respect.
Download or read book Judicial Power written by Christine Landfried and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2019-02-07 with total page 411 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The power of national and transnational constitutional courts to issue binding rulings in interpreting the constitution or an international treaty has been endlessly discussed. What does it mean for democratic governance that non-elected judges influence politics and policies? The authors of Judicial Power - legal scholars, political scientists, and judges - take a fresh look at this problem. To date, research has concentrated on the legitimacy, or the effectiveness, or specific decision-making methods of constitutional courts. By contrast, the authors here explore the relationship among these three factors. This book presents the hypothesis that judicial review allows for a method of reflecting on social integration that differs from political methods, and, precisely because of the difference between judicial and political decision-making, strengthens democratic governance. This hypothesis is tested in case studies on the role of constitutional courts in political transformations, on the methods of these courts, and on transnational judicial interactions.
Download or read book Constitutional Courts in Asia written by Hongyi Chen and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2018-09-20 with total page 407 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A comparative, systematic and critical analysis of constitutional courts and constitutional review in Asia.
Download or read book Comparative Constitutional Law written by Tom Ginsburg and published by Edward Elgar Publishing. This book was released on 2011-01-01 with total page 681 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This landmark volume of specially commissioned, original contributions by top international scholars organizes the issues and controversies of the rich and rapidly maturing field of comparative constitutional law. Divided into sections on constitutional design and redesign, identity, structure, individual rights and state duties, courts and constitutional interpretation, this comprehensive volume covers over 100 countries as well as a range of approaches to the boundaries of constitutional law. While some chapters reference the text of legal instruments expressly labeled constitutional, others focus on the idea of entrenchment or take a more functional approach. Challenging the current boundaries of the field, the contributors offer diverse perspectives - cultural, historical and institutional - as well as suggestions for future research. A unique and enlightening volume, Comparative Constitutional Law is an essential resource for students and scholars of the subject.
Download or read book The New Commonwealth Model of Constitutionalism written by Stephen Gardbaum and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2013-01-03 with total page 275 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Stephen Gardbaum proposes and examines a new way of protecting rights in a democracy.
Download or read book The Cambridge Companion to Comparative Constitutional Law written by Roger Masterman and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2019-10-03 with total page 653 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Comparing constitutions allows us to consider the similarities and differences in forms of government as well as the normative philosophies behind constitutional choices. The objective behind this Companion is to present the reader with a succinct yet wide-ranging companion to a modern comparative constitutional law course.
Download or read book Judging Statutes written by Robert A. Katzmann and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2014-08-14 with total page 184 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In an ideal world, the laws of Congress--known as federal statutes--would always be clearly worded and easily understood by the judges tasked with interpreting them. But many laws feature ambiguous or even contradictory wording. How, then, should judges divine their meaning? Should they stick only to the text? To what degree, if any, should they consult aids beyond the statutes themselves? Are the purposes of lawmakers in writing law relevant? Some judges, such as Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, believe courts should look to the language of the statute and virtually nothing else. Chief Judge Robert A. Katzmann of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit respectfully disagrees. In Judging Statutes, Katzmann, who is a trained political scientist as well as a judge, argues that our constitutional system charges Congress with enacting laws; therefore, how Congress makes its purposes known through both the laws themselves and reliable accompanying materials should be respected. He looks at how the American government works, including how laws come to be and how various agencies construe legislation. He then explains the judicial process of interpreting and applying these laws through the demonstration of two interpretative approaches, purposivism (focusing on the purpose of a law) and textualism (focusing solely on the text of the written law). Katzmann draws from his experience to show how this process plays out in the real world, and concludes with some suggestions to promote understanding between the courts and Congress. When courts interpret the laws of Congress, they should be mindful of how Congress actually functions, how lawmakers signal the meaning of statutes, and what those legislators expect of courts construing their laws. The legislative record behind a law is in truth part of its foundation, and therefore merits consideration.
Download or read book Weak Courts Strong Rights written by Mark Tushnet and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2009-07-20 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Unlike many other countries, the United States has few constitutional guarantees of social welfare rights such as income, housing, or healthcare. In part this is because many Americans believe that the courts cannot possibly enforce such guarantees. However, recent innovations in constitutional design in other countries suggest that such rights can be judicially enforced--not by increasing the power of the courts but by decreasing it. In Weak Courts, Strong Rights, Mark Tushnet uses a comparative legal perspective to show how creating weaker forms of judicial review may actually allow for stronger social welfare rights under American constitutional law. Under "strong-form" judicial review, as in the United States, judicial interpretations of the constitution are binding on other branches of government. In contrast, "weak-form" review allows the legislature and executive to reject constitutional rulings by the judiciary--as long as they do so publicly. Tushnet describes how weak-form review works in Great Britain and Canada and discusses the extent to which legislatures can be expected to enforce constitutional norms on their own. With that background, he turns to social welfare rights, explaining the connection between the "state action" or "horizontal effect" doctrine and the enforcement of social welfare rights. Tushnet then draws together the analysis of weak-form review and that of social welfare rights, explaining how weak-form review could be used to enforce those rights. He demonstrates that there is a clear judicial path--not an insurmountable judicial hurdle--to better enforcement of constitutional social welfare rights.
Download or read book Keeping Faith with the Constitution written by Goodwin Liu and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2010-08-05 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Chief Justice John Marshall argued that a constitution "requires that only its great outlines should be marked [and] its important objects designated." Ours is "intended to endure for ages to come, and consequently, to be adapted to the various crises of human affairs." In recent years, Marshall's great truths have been challenged by proponents of originalism and strict construction. Such legal thinkers as Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia argue that the Constitution must be construed and applied as it was when the Framers wrote it. In Keeping Faith with the Constitution, three legal authorities make the case for Marshall's vision. They describe their approach as "constitutional fidelity"--not to how the Framers would have applied the Constitution, but to the text and principles of the Constitution itself. The original understanding of the text is one source of interpretation, but not the only one; to preserve the meaning and authority of the document, to keep it vital, applications of the Constitution must be shaped by precedent, historical experience, practical consequence, and societal change. The authors range across the history of constitutional interpretation to show how this approach has been the source of our greatest advances, from Brown v. Board of Education to the New Deal, from the Miranda decision to the expansion of women's rights. They delve into the complexities of voting rights, the malapportionment of legislative districts, speech freedoms, civil liberties and the War on Terror, and the evolution of checks and balances. The Constitution's framers could never have imagined DNA, global warming, or even women's equality. Yet these and many more realities shape our lives and outlook. Our Constitution will remain vital into our changing future, the authors write, if judges remain true to this rich tradition of adaptation and fidelity.
Download or read book General Reports of the XVIIIth Congress of the International Academy of Comparative Law Rapports G n raux du XVIII me Congr s de l Acad mie Internationale de Droit Compar written by Karen B. Brown and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2011-12-30 with total page 699 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This title presents twenty-nine topics, prepared by leading scholars in more than 20 countries, providing a comparative analysis of cutting-edge legal topics of the 21st century. Considering topics of vital moment to contemporary legal scholars, the title includes pieces on Surrogate Motherhood, The Balance of Copyright in Comparative Perspective, International Law in Domestic Systems, Constitutional Courts as "Positive Legislators," Same-sex Marriage, Climate Change and the Law, The Regulation of Private Equity, Hedge Funds, and State Funds, and Regulation of Corporate Tax Evasion. Each chapter surveys legal developments in the U.S. and Canada, Europe, Asia, Latin and South America, Africa, and the Middle East in a format that permits the reader easy access to similarities and differences in the approaches of the selected national regimes. This comprehensive volume tells the story of parallel trends in the evolution of legal doctrine despite jurisdictional, cultural, and political barriers. While each of the covered countries stands alone as a sovereign, in a technologically advanced world their disparate systems nonetheless have converged to adopt comparable strategies in dealing with complex legal issues. The volume is a critical addition to the library of any scholar hoping to keep abreast of the major trends in contemporary law.
Download or read book Judicial review in comparative law written by Allan R. Brewer Carias and published by Ediciones Olejnik. This book was released on 2023-11-24 with total page 442 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "All over the world, in all democratic States, independently of having a legal system based on the common law or on the civil law principles, the courts – special constitutional courts, supreme courts or ordinary courts – have the power to decide and declare the unconstitutionality of legislation or of other State acts when a particular statute violates the text of the Constitution or of its constitutional principles. This power of the courts is the consequence of the consolidation in contem-porary constitutionalism of three fundamental principles of law: first, the existence of a written or unwritten constitution or of a fundamental law, conceived as a superior law with clear supremacy over all other statutes; second, the “rigid” character of such constitution or fundamental law, which implies that the amendments or reforms that may be introduced can only be put into practice by means of a particular and special constituent or legislative process, preventing the ordinary legislator from doing so; and third, the establishment in that same written or unwritten and rigid constitution or fundamental law, of the judicial means for guaranteeing its supremacy, over all other state acts, including legislative acts. Accordingly, in democratic systems subjected to such principles, the courts have the power to refuse to enforce a statute when deemed to be contrary to the Constitu-tion, considering it null or void, through what is known as the diffuse system of judicial review; and in many cases, they even have the power to annul the said unconstitutional law, through what is known as the concentrated system of judicial review. The former, is the system created more than two hundred years ago by the Supreme Court of the United States, and that so deeply characterizes the North American Constitutional system. The latter system, has been adopted in consti-tutional systems in which the judicial power of judicial review has been generally assigned to the Supreme Court or to one special Constitutional Court, as is the case, for example, of many countries in Europe and in Latin America. This concentrated system of judicial review, although established in many Latin American countries since the 19th century, was only effectively developed particularly in the world after World War II following the studies of Hans Kelsen. Of course, during the past thirty years many changes have occurred in the world on these matters of Judicial Review, in particularly in Europe and specifically in the United Kingdom, where these Lectures were delivered. Nonetheless, I have decided to publish them hereto in its integrality, as they were: the written work of a law professor made as a consequence of his research for the preparation of his lectures, not pretending to be anything else, but the academic testimony of the state of the subject of judicial review in the world in 1985-1986". Allan R. Brewer–Carías.
Download or read book Judges on Trial written by Shimon Shetreet and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2013-10-24 with total page 495 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study of the English judiciary stimulates a discussion of the factors shaping judicial independence, including accountability and constitutional adjudication.
Download or read book Constitutional Justice written by Trevor R. S. Allan and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2003 with total page 348 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Scope of Judicial Review
Download or read book Originalism and the Good Constitution written by John O. McGinnis and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2013-11-01 with total page 309 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Originalism holds that the U.S. Constitution should be interpreted according to its meaning at the time it was enacted. In their innovative defense of originalism, John McGinnis and Michael Rappaport maintain that the text of the Constitution should be adhered to by the Supreme Court because it was enacted by supermajorities--both its original enactment under Article VII and subsequent Amendments under Article V. A text approved by supermajorities has special value in a democracy because it has unusually wide support and thus tends to maximize the welfare of the greatest number. The authors recognize and respond to many possible objections. Does originalism perpetuate the dead hand of the past? How can originalism be justified, given the exclusion of African Americans and women from the Constitution and many of its subsequent Amendments? What is originalism's place in interpretation, after two hundred years of non-originalist precedent? A fascinating counterfactual they pose is this: had the Supreme Court not interpreted the Constitution so freely, perhaps the nation would have resorted to the Article V amendment process more often and with greater effect. Their book will be an important contribution to the literature on originalism, now the most prominent theory of constitutional interpretation.
Download or read book Courts Politics and Constitutional Law written by Martin Belov and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-10-16 with total page 189 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines how the judicialization of politics, and the politicization of courts, affect representative democracy, rule of law, and separation of powers. This volume critically assesses the phenomena of judicialization of politics and politicization of the judiciary. It explores the rising impact of courts on key constitutional principles, such as democracy and separation of powers, which is paralleled by increasing criticism of this influence from both liberal and illiberal perspectives. The book also addresses the challenges to rule of law as a principle, preconditioned on independent and powerful courts, which are triggered by both democratic backsliding and the mushrooming of populist constitutionalism and illiberal constitutional regimes. Presenting a wide range of case studies, the book will be a valuable resource for students and academics in constitutional law and political science seeking to understand the increasingly complex relationships between the judiciary, executive and legislature.
Download or read book Constitutional Comparison written by François Venter and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2021-07-26 with total page 310 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In our globalized era it has become impossible to deal effectively with constitutional law and related subjects such as fundamental rights, administrative law and political science without knowledge of foreign systems. A wealth of literature is available on practically all constitutional systems and the intricacies of their application. This, however, presents the constitutionalist with a formidable problem: Which foreign systems should I explore in order to make relevant comparisons, and how should I go about it? This book addresses the core problems of comparability and appropriate comparative methodology in the realm of contemporary constitutionalism. The outcome is, however, not mere theorizing. Most of the text is devoted to an incisive application of the chosen comparative method to four geographically, historically, and culturally divergent, but thoroughly comparable, constitutional systems. In the course of the comparative exercise, contemporary constitutional dogma and constitutional mechanics are analyzed and explained, in many instances in their historical contexts, making the book itself a useful source of comparative and historical information.
