The Importance Of Judicial Review

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In constitutional democracies, judicial review, in its various versions, is typically considered the main device to ensure compliance to the constitution. In times where judicial review is under hard scrutiny Schauer has offered in different articles several arguments on its behalf. According to Schauer, one of the functions and virtues of law is to settle in an authoritative way what should be done. Written constitutions partly exist because some degree of uniformity in decisions on issues in which people often have different substantive views and divergent personal agendas is considered valuable. A constitution would thus not only fulfill a coordinating but also a stabilizing function. But the constitution may sometimes have different interpretations that compete with each other, which in turn can be performed by different agents. If we cannot determine which of them prevails the constitution cannot accomplish its settlement function. Therefore, according to Schauer, the same reasons that make law, and a constitution, valuable things in our lives lead us to understand that there are good reasons to have judicial review and to privilege or consider authoritative the interpretation of a particular agent, the Supreme Court. In other words, judicial review serves the settlement…show more content…
He thinks that the courts in general and the Supreme Court in particular are in a better position than the other branches of government to fulfill the task of determining what the constitution says and ensuring compliance. This is not because the judges have special or superior epistemic capacities but because the other candidates could not perform better that role. The political branches of government and their officials would be worse at interpreting and applying to themselves the limits imposed by the

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