Restraining Judicial Power

Restraining Judicial Power PDF Author: Shamshad Pasarlay
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 50

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Book Description
The 2004 Constitution of Afghanistan vaguely describes the powers of the Supreme Court (the Court) to interpret the constitution and exercise judicial review. It also describes an independent commission for the supervision of the implementation of the constitution (the Commission), whose powers are ambiguous and seem to overlap with those of the Court. The political branches of the government have taken advantage of these constitutional ambiguities and adopted legislation that vested judicial review and constitutional interpretation powers in two rival institutions, the Court and the Commission, thereby containing the power of the regular judiciary. This Article explores the implications of this fragmented system of judicial review in Afghanistan. It argues that this fractured system of judicial review has severely undermined the powers of the Court, and it has impeded the ability of both the Court and the Commission to issue binding judicial review opinions. Both entities have instead developed a practice of advising the political branches of the government, and, in the process, they have issued a large number of advisory opinions, letting the executive and the legislature treat the Court and the Commission as consultative bodies rather than co-equal and independent branches of the government. This Article offers the first detailed examination of Afghanistan's judicial review system. In addition, it adds a critical and timely case study to the scholarship on the politics of courts in authoritarian regimes. Specifically, this history and analysis provide evidence to support claims made by Tom Ginsburg and Tamir Moustafa that authoritarian presidents try to restrain the power and authority of the regular judiciary by setting up competing institutions with overlapping jurisdiction over constitutional matters instead of creating a unified hierarchical institutional mechanism. This Article further illustrates that Ginsburg and Moustafa's theory might be extended to powerful, not necessarily authoritarian, executives who may also contain the power of the regular judiciary by intentionally engineering competing institutions to resolve constitutional disputes.

Restraining Judicial Power

Restraining Judicial Power PDF Author: Shamshad Pasarlay
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 50

Get Book Here

Book Description
The 2004 Constitution of Afghanistan vaguely describes the powers of the Supreme Court (the Court) to interpret the constitution and exercise judicial review. It also describes an independent commission for the supervision of the implementation of the constitution (the Commission), whose powers are ambiguous and seem to overlap with those of the Court. The political branches of the government have taken advantage of these constitutional ambiguities and adopted legislation that vested judicial review and constitutional interpretation powers in two rival institutions, the Court and the Commission, thereby containing the power of the regular judiciary. This Article explores the implications of this fragmented system of judicial review in Afghanistan. It argues that this fractured system of judicial review has severely undermined the powers of the Court, and it has impeded the ability of both the Court and the Commission to issue binding judicial review opinions. Both entities have instead developed a practice of advising the political branches of the government, and, in the process, they have issued a large number of advisory opinions, letting the executive and the legislature treat the Court and the Commission as consultative bodies rather than co-equal and independent branches of the government. This Article offers the first detailed examination of Afghanistan's judicial review system. In addition, it adds a critical and timely case study to the scholarship on the politics of courts in authoritarian regimes. Specifically, this history and analysis provide evidence to support claims made by Tom Ginsburg and Tamir Moustafa that authoritarian presidents try to restrain the power and authority of the regular judiciary by setting up competing institutions with overlapping jurisdiction over constitutional matters instead of creating a unified hierarchical institutional mechanism. This Article further illustrates that Ginsburg and Moustafa's theory might be extended to powerful, not necessarily authoritarian, executives who may also contain the power of the regular judiciary by intentionally engineering competing institutions to resolve constitutional disputes.

Raw Judicial Power?

Raw Judicial Power? PDF Author: Robert J. McKeever
Publisher: Manchester University Press
ISBN: 9780719048739
Category : Constitutional law
Languages : en
Pages : 342

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Book Description
Published here with a new chapter covering judgements from 1993 to 1995, Raw judicial power? is established as the definitive analysis of the powerful forces shaping the United States Supreme Court today. Robert J. McKeever analyses the approach of the Court to the most pressing contemporary social issues, such as capital punishment, abortion, race and affirmative action, gender equality and religion, sex and politics. He shows how social policy initiatives in the US have often come from the judicial rather than the legislative branch of government, leading to charges that the Supreme Court has been exercising 'raw judicial power'. He examines the policy decisions the Court has made, and argues that the Court has increasingly jettisoned traditional notions of constitutional interpretation in order to tackle the conflicts in contemporary American society. Students of American politics, constitutional law and social policy will all find this book invaluable.

Judicial Review and Judicial Power in the Supreme Court

Judicial Review and Judicial Power in the Supreme Court PDF Author: Kermit L. Hall
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135691460
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 503

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Book Description
Available as a single volume or as part of the 10 volume set Supreme Court in American Society

The Supreme Court in American Politics

The Supreme Court in American Politics PDF Author: David F. Forte
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 118

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Book Description


American Judicial Power

American Judicial Power PDF Author: Michael Buenger
Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing
ISBN: 1783477903
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 331

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Book Description
American Judicial Power: The State Court Perspective is a welcome addition to the breadth of studies on the American legal system and provides an accessible and highly illuminating overview of the state courts and their functions. The study of America’s courts is overwhelmingly skewed toward the federal government, and therefore often overlooks state courts and their importance. Michael Buenger and Paul De Muniz fill this gap in the study of American constitutionalism, as they examine the wide and distinctive powers these courts exercise, and their role in administering the bulk of the nation’s justice system. This groundbreaking work covers many critical topics pertaining to the state courts, including: a comparison of the role of state and federal courts, the history of America’s state courts, the judicial selection processes utilized in the states, the unique roles assigned to state courts and the varying structure of those courts, the relationship between state judicial power and state legislative power, and the opportunities and challenges that are and will be facing the state courts. With an insightful foreword from Sanford Levinson, this revolutionary book will be of interest to students, educators, and researchers in the fields of law, political science, and government. Constitutional law experts will also benefit from an analysis of the state courts and their powers.

Restoring the Lost Constitution

Restoring the Lost Constitution PDF Author: Randy E. Barnett
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691159734
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 448

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Book Description
The U.S. Constitution found in school textbooks and under glass in Washington is not the one enforced today by the Supreme Court. In Restoring the Lost Constitution, Randy Barnett argues that since the nation's founding, but especially since the 1930s, the courts have been cutting holes in the original Constitution and its amendments to eliminate the parts that protect liberty from the power of government. From the Commerce Clause, to the Necessary and Proper Clause, to the Ninth and Tenth Amendments, to the Privileges or Immunities Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, the Supreme Court has rendered each of these provisions toothless. In the process, the written Constitution has been lost. Barnett establishes the original meaning of these lost clauses and offers a practical way to restore them to their central role in constraining government: adopting a "presumption of liberty" to give the benefit of the doubt to citizens when laws restrict their rightful exercises of liberty. He also provides a new, realistic and philosophically rigorous theory of constitutional legitimacy that justifies both interpreting the Constitution according to its original meaning and, where that meaning is vague or open-ended, construing it so as to better protect the rights retained by the people. As clearly argued as it is insightful and provocative, Restoring the Lost Constitution forcefully disputes the conventional wisdom, posing a powerful challenge to which others must now respond. This updated edition features an afterword with further reflections on individual popular sovereignty, originalist interpretation, judicial engagement, and the gravitational force that original meaning has exerted on the Supreme Court in several recent cases.

The Responsible Exercise of Judicial Power

The Responsible Exercise of Judicial Power PDF Author: Terri Lynn Jennings
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 384

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Book Description


The Role of the Judiciary in the Protection of Human Rights

The Role of the Judiciary in the Protection of Human Rights PDF Author: Eugene Cotran
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004635009
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 490

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Book Description
This volume contains papers presented at the conference 'The Role of the Judiciary in the Protection of Human Rights', held in Cairo, December 1996 under the auspices of the Supreme Constitutional Court of Egypt and the British Council.

Extending Rights' Reach

Extending Rights' Reach PDF Author: Jud Mathews
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190682930
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 265

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Book Description
Constitutional rights protect individuals against government overreaching, but that is not all they do. In different ways and to different degrees, constitutional rights also regulate legal relations among private parties in most legal systems. Rights can have not only a vertical effect, within the hierarchical relationship between citizen and state, but also a horizontal one, on the citizen-to-citizen relationships otherwise governed by private law. In every constitutional system with judicially enforceable constitutional rights, courts must make choices about whether, when, and how to give those rights horizontal effect. This book is about how different courts make those choices, and about the consequences that they have. The doctrines that courts build to manage the horizontal effect of rights speak to the most fundamental issues that constitutional systems address, about the nature of rights and of constitutionalism itself. These doctrines can also entrench or enhance judicial power, but in very different ways depending on the legal system. This book offers three case studies, of Germany, the United States, and Canada. For each, it offers a detailed account of the horizontal effect jurisprudence of its apex court-not in isolation, but as a central feature of a broader account of that country's constitutional development. The case studies show how the choices courts make about horizontal rights reflect existing normative and political realities and, over time, help to shape new ones.

Judicial Power, Democracy and Legal Positivism

Judicial Power, Democracy and Legal Positivism PDF Author: Tom D. Campbell
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351924648
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 426

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Book Description
In this book, a distinguished international group of legal theorists re-examine legal positivism as a prescriptive political theory and consider its implications for the constitutionally defined roles of legislatures and courts. The issues are illustrated with recent developments in Australian constitutional law.