How the Rise and Fall of Regimes Affects Judicial Review

2020 ◽  
pp. 81-96
Author(s):  
Jack M. Balkin
Keyword(s):  
Older People ◽  
Judicial Review ◽  
Federal Courts ◽  
Judicial Activism ◽  
Dominant Party ◽  
Opposition Party ◽  
Political Time

The rise and fall of regimes shapes partisan attitudes about judicial review. How people feel about judicial activism and judicial restraint depends on where they are in political time, and which party tends to control the federal courts. The parties’ positions are mirror images. Over the course of a regime the dominant party increasingly relies on judicial review to achieve its goals, while the opposition party becomes increasingly skeptical of judicial review and advocates judicial restraint—although neither party ever fully abandons using judicial review to advance its policies. As the cycle moves from the beginning of a regime to its final days, the parties—and the legal intellectuals allied with them—gradually switch positions. The party of judicial restraint becomes the party of judicial engagement, and vice-versa. The effect, however, is generational; older people may stick with their hard-won lessons about the courts, while younger generations, who have very different experiences, take contrary positions.

Judicial Review in the Cycles of Constitutional Time

2020 ◽  
pp. 69-80
Author(s):  
Jack M. Balkin
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Judicial Review ◽  
Federal Courts ◽  
The Political ◽  
Federal Judiciary ◽  
Long Run ◽  
Political Time ◽  
Over Time

The cycles of constitutional time affect the work of the federal judiciary in multiple ways. Because of life tenure, the judiciary is a lagging indicator of the cycles of politics. Hence judicial time is often out of sync with political time. Judicial review is shaped by the strategy of partisan entrenchment: the political parties attempt to install jurists who will be ideologically sympathetic. The cycles also affect the political supports for judicial review—the reasons why politicians accept judicial review and have helped to construct the power of the federal courts over time. Politicians support judicial review and construct how judges practice it because judicial review performs important tasks and manages problems for politicians over the long run, even if they disagree with particular decisions.

scholarly journals Judicial Review oleh Mahkamah Konstitusi sebagai Fungsi Ajudikasi Konstitusional di Indonesia

2021 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 70-79
Author(s):  
Diyar Ginanjar Andiraharja
Keyword(s):  
Judicial Review ◽  
Judicial Activism

Penelitian ini ditujukan untuk menganalisa kewenangan  Judicial Review oleh Mahkamah Konstitusi sebagai ajudikasi konstitusional menurut prinsip konstitusionalisme dan demokrasi. Muncul penilaian terhadap Mahkamah Konstitusi selain menjadi negative legislator juga berkembang menjadi positive legislator yang merupakan kewenangan lembaga pembentuk undang-undang. Metode yang digunakan berupa penelitian hukum normatif. Kepustakan yang dikaji digunakan untuk menjwab pertanyaan penelitian.  Dari penelitian ini diungkapkan  Mahkamah Konsitusi dalam  menjalankan kewenangannya  melakukan Judicial Review, pada praktiknya terjadi suatu perdebatan di mana dalam model putusan Mahkamah Konstitusi dianggap bertentangan dengan prinsip konstitusionalitas dan prinsip demokrasi dalam hal pembentukan suatu kebijakan. Beberapa model tersebut dianggap melampaui kewenangan Mahkamah Konstitusi berupa adanya putusan yang berisi argumen kebijakan serta adanya putusan yang di dalamnya ada  perumusan norma baru. Kesimpulan dari penelitian ini aktivitas menafsirkan UUD 1945  memungkinkan  lahirnya sudut pandang judicial activism  yang dapat memposisikan Mahkamah Konstitusi sebagai badan peradilan  yang memiliki supremasi dalam ajudikasi  konstitusional, walaupun pembentukan Mahkamah Konstitusi itu  sendiri sebenarnya sebagai bagian dari upaya pembaharuan konstitusi dalam memperkuat prinsip pemisahan kekuasaan dan prinsip check and balances. Sehingga perlu dikedepankan  proporsionalitas peran Mahkamah Konstitusi dalam ajudikasi konstitusional. 

scholarly journals JUDICIAL ACTIVISM OR SELF-RESTRAINT : SOME INSIGHT INTO THE INDONESIAN CONSTITUTIONAL COURT

Yuridika ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 145
Author(s):  
Radian Salman ◽  
Sukardi Sukardi ◽  
Mohammad Syaiful Aris
Keyword(s):  
Judicial Review ◽  
Separation Of Powers ◽  
Constitutional Court ◽  
Power Relationship ◽  
Judicial Activism ◽  
Conceptual Approach ◽  
Judicial Control ◽  
The One ◽  
Law Making

The Constitutional Court of Republic of Indonesia is centralized judicial review institution which implements a posteriori and abstract control. Constitutional court decision often politically sensitive and involve important issues. On the one hand handing down strong decisions that uphold important constitutional principles can bring great benefits to citizens and can strengthen support for democracy but on the other hand, strong role of the court in judicial review tends to encroach increasingly on the territory of the law making institution. This article examines the decision of constitutional court in the framework of a tension between constitutionalism and democracy, especially from theoretical or conceptual approach. As result of examining its decisions, Indonesian Constitutional Court may reflect two characters; judicial activism as characterized by acting as law-maker and using policy in judicial decisions and/ or judicial self-restraint.  Recent  Indonesian experience shows that judicial review of legislation is not a simply of judicial control over law-making institution, as it brings  tension in the context of power relations in the scheme of separation of power. Relationship between the court and legislature, in respective of judicial review, will culminate in the philosophy of the judiciary. However, as constitutionalism and democracy are virtue, decisions of the Constitutional Court in judicial review should create mode of self-limitation within the framework of the principle of separation of powers.

scholarly journals Judicial Supremacy and National Judicial Review

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ken I. Kersch
Keyword(s):  
Judicial Review ◽  
Federal Courts ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Academic Disciplines ◽  
Alexander Hamilton ◽  
The People ◽  
Judicial Supremacy ◽  
The Us ◽  
Us Constitution ◽  
We The People

Judicial review is the power of a court to assess the constitutionality of legislation, and to hold null and void any legislation it finds to contravene the Constitution. Although not mentioned anywhere in the US Constitution, the power was exercised by both state and federal courts from the nation’s inception, most prominently by the US Supreme Court in Marbury v. Madison (1803). In Marbury, borrowing from arguments advanced earlier by Alexander Hamilton in Federalist #78, and more general common law and colonial understandings, Chief Justice John Marshall set out a theoretical justification for the practice anchored in a court’s duty to decide cases according to law. In so doing, where a court finds a conflict between the fundamental law of the Constitution (adopted by “We the People,” acting in their sovereign capacity), and ordinary law (passed by legislatures), the court is obliged to give precedence to the former over the latter. Although this has been widely accepted as a legitimate practice arising out of a judge’s broader duty to decide cases according to law, there were always those who objected to judicial review as implicitly instituting “judicial supremacy,” where, by virtue of the exercise of the judicial review power, a judge’s interpretation of the Constitution was held to take precedence over that of any other. But why should the judge’s interpretation be understood as supreme, when elected members of Congress and the president—like judges—also takes oaths to uphold the Constitution and may have their own, perhaps more sensible, interpretation? Debates over these matters recur throughout American history, particularly in periods when, on matters of unusual political salience, the court’s interpretation of the Constitution is consistently at odds with that of other elected officials, or of the people (what, in recent years, has come to be called “extra-judicial constitutional interpretation”). For over a century now—beginning with the contestation in the late 19th and early 20th centuries between traditionalist judges wielding their judicial review powers versus the progressive innovations of the newly emerging American regulatory and social welfare state—the nature, theory, and practice of judicial review have been at the center of academic and popular discussion of US constitutional law. The subject has thus been approached from many angles, by scholars from different academic disciplines, with a diversity of questions in mind. Those researching judicial review will usually have in mind a particular angle rather than the whole subject.

RESTRICTIONS ON JUDICIAL ELECTION CAMPAIGN SPEECH: SILENCING CRITICISM OF LIBERAL ACTIVISM

2004 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 148-176 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lino A. Graglia
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Judicial Review ◽  
Constitutional Law ◽  
The United States ◽  
Judicial Power ◽  
Election Campaign ◽  
Judicial Activism ◽  
Policy Choices ◽  
The World

Constitutional law in the United States is, for most practical purposes, the product of ‘judicial review’, the power of judges to disallow policy choices made by other officials or institutions of government, ostensibly because those choices are prohibited by the Constitution. This extraordinary and unprecedented power, America's dubious contribution to the science of government, has made American judges the most powerful in the world, not only legislators but super-legislators, legislators with virtually the last word. Because lawmaking power divorced from popular will is tyranny, most states have attempted to reconcile the lawmaking power of judges with representative self-government by subjecting all or some judges to some form of popular election. In all but four such states, judges, encouraged and supported by their fellow lawyers in the organized bar—would-be judges and beneficiaries of judicial power—have responded by adopting codes of judicial ethics that limit what candidates for election to judicial office are permitted to say. The effect is to undermine elections as a control on judicial power by limiting criticism of judicial activism, the misuse of judicial power.

The United States: Creation, Reconstruction, the Progressives, and the Modern Era

2021 ◽  
pp. 97-182
Author(s):  
Steven Gow Calabresi
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Judicial Review ◽  
Separation Of Powers ◽  
State Legislatures ◽  
Federal Court ◽  
The United States ◽  
Federal Courts ◽  
American People ◽  
State Governments ◽  
State Laws

This chapter focuses on the origins and growth of judicial review of the constitutionality of federal and state legislation in the United States. American judicial review emerged from the vertical federalism umpiring of the King-in-Council, which reined in errant colonies; and from the open political space created by bicameralism, the separation of powers, and federalism, which gave the federal courts the political leeway to engage in judicial review of the constitutionality of federal and state laws. American judicial review took its present form of allowing horizontal separation of powers and enumerated powers vertical judicial review during the critical years between 1776 and 1803 when the faith of the American people shifted away from state legislatures and state governments and toward stronger executives and courts and a much stronger national government. This theory is set forth correctly by Professor Gordon S. Wood in both articles he has shared with me and in conversation. The addition of the three Reconstruction Amendments, and the enormous statutory expansions of federal court jurisdiction and of the number of lower federal court judges after the Civil War, occurred for rights from wrongs reasons. They led, after the incorporation of the Bill of Rights against the states between 1940 and 1970, to a situation where the Supreme Court now reins in errant state legislatures in much the same way the King-in-Council used to rein in errant colonial legislatures.

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