Judicial Review

Paper Summary:

This paper explains that judicial review insures neither laws nor executive orders violate either existing case law or some element of the constitution itself. The author points out that, without the power of judicial review, there is effectively no balance of power among the three branches of government. The paper stresses that judicial review allows the courts, and specifically the Supreme Court, the ability to safeguard the rights of individual Americans.

From the Paper:

"We have been discussing the concept of judicial review as it if arose from the Constitution, and indeed the specific authority for and practice of judicial review as we experience it in the United States today does derive from the Constitution. However, for these Constitutional provisions to have arisen the idea of judicial review must have existed before the Constitution was itself written and ratified, and this is in fact the case, although the concept was not made explicitly a part of American polity until 1803 when it was invoked by Chief Justice John Marshall in Marbury v. Madison. While the idea is integral to the Constitutional separation of powers, it is important to note that the power of judicial review is not in fact anywhere explicitly described in the Constitution, although the practice of judicial review had been seen even before the ratification of the Constitution during the period of Confederacy that intervened between the Revolution and the ratification of the Constitution when federal courts used the power of judicial review to strike laws that had been permitted to stand by state courts."

More papers on Judicial Review:

• Term Paper # 32717 : "The Judicial Review and the Charter"
• Term Paper # 127058 : "John Marshall and Judicial Review"
• Analytical Essay # 126594 : "John Marshall and Judicial Review"
• Term Paper # 112196 : "Judicial Review"

APA Citation:

MLA Citation: