This panel considers theoretical justifications for the institution of judicial review as democratic contestation, as well as the forms of judicial review that those justifications might suggest. The papers are connected by their apparent reliance on non-epistemic justifications; that is, justifications that recognize that judges have neither abnormal moral insight nor abnormal capacity to reason...
Beyond Juristocracy and Legislative Authoritarianism: On the criteria governing the legitimate institutionalization of the relationship between courts and legislatures
The idea of Socratic contestation provides not only a basic account of the point of judicial review but also guides its appropriate institutionalization. The distinction between “strong“ and “weak“ judicial review is undercomplex. Instead a wider range of variables needs to be considered. This piece discusses what these variables are, how they matter and what...
The real case for judicial review
Most justifications for judicial review are instrumental, seeking to ground it in the better protection of rights, democracy or to bring about justice. While these aims are laudable, they are also unverifiable. What is needed, then, is a non-instrumentalist argument to support judicial review. That argument is that judicial review facilitates the hearing of (justified...
The republican core of the case for judicial review
In this paper, I argue that Philip Pettit‘s republican conception of democracy offers the basis of a compelling normative justification for the institution of judicial review that is distinctive from the mainstream legal constitutionalist justifications and (contra Richard Bellamy), that accounts for the main objections of political constitutionalists. The paper seeks to connect this general...