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Delaney, Erin F.; Dixon, Rosalind --- "Introduction" [2018] ELECD 760; in Delaney, F. Erin; Dixon, Rosalind (eds), "Comparative Judicial Review" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2018) 1

Book Title: Comparative Judicial Review

Editor(s): Delaney, F. Erin; Dixon, Rosalind

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN: 9781788110594

Section: Chapter 1

Section Title: Introduction

Author(s): Delaney, Erin F.; Dixon, Rosalind

Number of pages: 11

Abstract/Description:

The late 20th and early 21st centuries may well be marked as the Judicial Era. Courts have burgeoned across the globe. With this turn to judicial power has come the rise of judicial review—a court’s review of a legislative or executive act for constitutional compliance. Judicial review now exists in some form in more than two-thirds of countries worldwide (Dixon and Ginsburg, Chapter 3, this volume), including in many new and fragile democracies. And it has further expanded to the international arena, with judicial review by international courts of both supranational and national acts. Accompanying this rise of courts has been a growth in academic commentary and discussion about the justifications for and the scope of judicial review. Oftentimes the focus has been a normative analysis of the role of a court in a specific national system, but recent work has showcased a more theoretical and comparative trend (see, e.g., Daly 2017; Ginsburg 2003; Gloppen et al. 2004; Hirschl 2004, 2014; Issacharoff 2015; Kapiszewski et al. 2013; Sadurski 2008; Yap 2017). This volume builds on the existing literature by providing a distinct interdisciplinary and global approach to the core questions surrounding judicial review: What accounts for the adoption of judicial review in various contexts, or justifies its normative foundation? What determines its scope and effectiveness? How is it structured, institutionalized and operationalized? A key premise of this volume is that, to analyze courts and explore their constitutional role, we must situate them in a broader social and political context.