JUDICIAL REVIEW AND HUMAN RIGHTS Heringa/ Kiiver: 2009 The term ‘judicial review’ means that a judge can examine a law, or other object of scrutiny, and check its compatibility with a higher norm. Thus, a judge may, depending on the system, test whether a regional law is in harmony or in conflict with a higher, national law. If the lower law provides rules that go against the provisions of the higher law, then the judge, if he has review power, may establish a conflict. Similarly, he may check whether an administrative decision by a public authority complies with the authorizing general legislation. He may further, again depending on the system, examine the validity of a national statute by setting it against the national constitution, an exercise called constitutional review of legislation. In some systems, he may review the constitutionality of political parties. He may review the compatibility of national law with general principles of law, such as proportionality, or with an international treaty, such as the European Convention on Human Rights. Conversely, he may also, where applicable, check the compliance of treaties or acts of international organizations with the national constitution. Judicial review is thus a court’s power to detect conflicts in law, and possibly to attach consequences to resolve the conflict. Three subjects shall be discussed here in greater detail. First, constitutional review of legislation, pertaining to the constitutionality of statutes made by the central or national lawmaker; second, review of such legislation for treaty compliance, in particular for compliance with the European Convention on Human Rights where applicable; and review of legislation for compliance with the law of the European Union, including the reverse scenario of the review of the constitutionality of European law. Constitutional Review of Legislation There are few issues where the same doctrinal arguments can lead to such differing results across constitutional systems like the issue of constitutional review of legislation. While the right of judges to declare laws unconstitutional is perceived to be acceptable, normal and perhaps even natural in some systems, in other systems this right is fiercely contested. The two arguments typically brought forward to justify the right for judges to review the constitutionality of legislation are, first, that judicial review guarantees the supremacy of the constitution and, second, that judicial review provides a check on the lawmaker for the protection of minorities. The first argument stresses that the constitution is the highest norm in a legal system, and that all other law derives from its authority. Thus, legislation should not be allowed to violate the constitution. Supporters of judicial review would argue that, consequently, judges should refuse to apply normal statutes if they violate the constitution. Having a constitution but no constitutional review powers for the courts would, in that view, be pointless, since the lawmaker could violate the constitution with impunity. Hans Kelsen, an Austrian scholar credited with designing the prototype of a continental European constitutional court in 1920, argued that laws derive their authority from their compliance with higher law, that non- compliant laws cannot be normative and that a constitution cannot be supreme unless it is enforced by judicial review of legislation. US Supreme Court chief justice Marshall had already stated that judicial review necessarily follows from the supremacy of the Constitution in 1803. However, one may equally argue that the constitution can very well be supreme, but that this supremacy does not mean that judges should be able to frustrate the will of the lawmaker. The lawmaker should simply take account of the constitution when passing statutes in the first place, and make the right choices himself, subject as he is to democratic oversight from the voters. The Netherlands subscribes to such ‘optimist’ school of thought, putting trust in democratically elected office-holders rather than in unelected judges. In France, immunity of legislation results from the sovereignty of the people whose representatives adopt laws (although France did introduce constitutional review in 2008 after all, and a Dutch proposal to allow the same is pending). The second argument holds that checks and balances are necessary to provide a counterweight against the majority of the day. Democracy is not the same as tyranny of the majority, it also includes the protection of minorities. In the rule of law, minorities can find such protection as even the majority is bound by law. At the same time, especially in the US, this very counter-majoritarian character of judicial review is often perceived as problematic, especially where judges are suspected of pursuing their own political agenda against the preferences of the elected institutions. There are more examples how it is possible to invoke the same principles and arrive at opposite conclusions regarding the justification of judicial review. Separation of powers, the notion that legislature and judiciary should be kept apart, can be construed as meaning that courts should apply the law, not criticize or second- guess it. This is the traditional French reading of such separation, namely the separation of the judiciary from the legislature. Yet separation of powers can also be taken to include the notion of checks and balances, so that it would appear healthy to have a judicial check on the lawmaker. Legal certainty would command that statutes, once in force, should stand until they are repealed, without courts casting doubt on their validity; citizens should however also be able to rely, with certainty, on their constitution, which should always triumph over conflicting legislation. One might say that judges should not be trusted, and not be given too much power, because they are, after all, not elected; one might equally argue that judges are trustworthy because they are not elected, and that they can have a more objective and professional view on constitutionality questions compared to political and majority-driven lawmakers. The rule of law can be seen as a principle which judges are qualified to enforce, as they are trained to interpret written law in practice. Conversely, one may argue that there cannot possibly be only one ‘correct’ or ‘orthodox’ meaning of constitutional provisions, and that there is no reason to assume that the interpretation given by judges is any better than the interpretation given by lawmakers. The Procedural Setting of Constitutional Review In those systems which do feature constitutional review of legislation, it is possible to classify different models under different headings. Systems differ most fundamentally in whether their constitutional review is: abstract or concrete; ex ante or ex post; centralized or decentralized. Concrete review of legislation means the verification whether a law that is about to be applied in adversarial judicial proceedings is actually constitutional. It arises out of a concrete dispute between two parties before a court. In abstract review, a law is submitted to scrutiny outside the context of an actual application in a dispute; it is typically triggered by office-holders, such as the government. Ex ante review takes place before the law has entered into force, and strictly speaking it targets bills rather than existing legislation; ex post review subjects legislation in force to judicial scrutiny. In decentralized systems of review, any court may check the constitutionality of legislation; in centralized systems, a special constitutional court or quasi- judicial body exists to carry out this task. Modern notions of constitutional review are rooted in a historical break- through within American constitutional law. In 1803, the US Supreme Court had held that the US Constitution had to prevail over ordinary legislation, and that it followed from their professional tasks that in the course of proceedings before them judges should detect whether different applicable norms conflict with each other. As a result, all courts in the US have the power to verify whether legislation that they are about to apply is at all constitutional. This construction rules out abstract review or the review of bills in the form of advisory opinions or otherwise, because that would take place outside the context of an actual court case and would thus not fall within the professional tasks of the judiciary. Germany, like many other states in Central, Southern and Eastern Europe, features a special constitutional court that carries out review functions. The system is called the continental, Austrian or Kelsenian model of judicial review. These systems allow courts to examine the constitutionality of statutes, but keep the power to invalidate these statutes centralized in one constitutional court set up specifically for that purpose. Review is therefore decentralized when arising from concrete cases, but the final decision on constitutionality is centralized. In addition, Kelsenian systems typically allow constitutional courts to engage in abstract review of legislation upon request from enumerated state institutions. France was long famous for having a system whereby laws could only be reviewed before they had entered into force. This task was carried out by the Constitutional Council. The Council was not strictly a court as it was not necessarily staffed by lawyers and did not hear individual cases, but was usually nevertheless considered to belong to the larger family of constitutional courts in Europe. Since the constitutional reform of 2008, France allows its two supreme courts to refer questions regarding the constitutionality of statutes to the Constitutional Council as well. Thus, in addition to its ex ante review in the abstract, France now also features concrete review ex post. In the United Kingdom, constitutionality review of statutes would be difficult, since there is no central document that would codify the most fundamental rules governing the state to start with; furthermore, second-guessing Parliament would mean to violate one of the most important principles of the UK constitution itself, namely parliamentary sovereignty in the sense of legislative supremacy. Thus, Parliament and only Parliament can unmake a statute. The Netherlands explicitly prohibits its judges from questioning the constitutionality of statutes, although an amendment to allow review on enumerated grounds has been adopted in first reading in 2008. What exactly is the consequence of a judicial decision stating that a statute is unconstitutional? Often terms are used interchangeably: the court invalidates the statute, quashes it, strikes it down, annuls it, declares it void, disapplies it, sets it aside, etc. Two principal effects should be distinguished, however. ‘Disapplication’, ‘invalidation’ or ‘setting aside’ means to leave the statute as it stands, but to refrain from applying it to a particular case. ‘Annulment’ or ‘declaring void’ carries further- reaching consequences. It means that the statute is struck out and ceases to exist, as it were. One might compare it to an annulled contract. The legal fiction is then even that it in fact never has existed, although typically retroactive effects of the annulment of statutes are limited in order to preserve legal certainty. The German Constitutional Court can declare a statute void; the judgment itself then carries the rank of a repealing statute and is published as such. In the US, since all constitutionality review is decentralized and concrete, unconstitutionality means disapplication in concrete cases; however, once the US Supreme Court has found a statute in violation of the Constitution, a common-law precedent is established so that in the future all other courts will have to disapply the statute as well. One might say that in this case ‘setting aside’ and ‘declaring void’ boils down to the same thing, namely that the statute loses all practical effect. The legal construction nevertheless is different, since a void statute disappears whereas a statute that is set aside is technically still in force. Review of Treaty Law Compliance A subject often associated with judicial review as regards constitutionality is judicial review as regards compliance of statutes with international treaty provisions. After all, here again judges would test legislation for their compatibility with a higher norm; and yet again, the question arises whether treaty law really is ‘higher’ in rank, and what the consequence of that would be. International treaty provisions gain particular relevance when human rights are to be derived from them in a domestic setting. The European Convention on Human Rights, a multilateral human-rights instrument, is a case in point. The domestic effect that states give to treaty provisions essentially depends on whether they adhere to a monist or dualist model. In a monist system, national statutes and provisions from treaties ratified by the state are treated as forming part of one and the same national legal order, hence the term monism. This allows individuals to invoke treaty provisions before a national court, in the same manner as they would invoke national law. If a conflict arises between national law and a treaty provision, the latter prevails. Under dualism, meanwhile, national law and treaties are treated as falling under two separate realms. Individuals can invoke national provisions only; in order to profit from treaty provisions, they would have to wait until their lawmaker has transposed them into national law, in pursuance of the state’s international obligations. The case for embracing monism is straightforward. The argument would be that it is pointless to have treaties if citizens cannot rely on them before their national judge; and such reliance would be pointless if treaties would not also over- ride conflicting national legislation. The case for dualism is not without merit, either. Under the private law concept of privity of contract, contracts are binding upon the parties thereto, not upon third parties; a treaty may be likened to a con- tract between the state and a foreign state making mutual promises, not between the state and its own citizens. To a dualist state, treaty enforcement should be a matter for international diplomacy and public international law, not domestic judicial action. Another argument against unconditional monism might be that it would allow treaties to undermine the national constitution via ‘imported’ law taking precedence over national law: constitutional review of treaties might be called for. France and the Netherlands are monist systems, although both qualify the overriding effect of treaties somewhat. France makes the override subject to reciprocity in the other contracting states, the Netherlands limits overrides to treaty provisions that can confer individual rights. In both systems, treaty review may be seen as ‘compensating’ somewhat for the judges’ current or previous lack of constitutional review powers. The US is a qualified monist system: federal treaties override State law and earlier federal legislation, but their domestic effect can be undone by later federal legislation. The UK and Germany, meanwhile, are dualist: treaties can be relied upon only once they have been implemented into national law. A challenge arises for dualist systems when it comes to giving domestic effect to human- rights treaties such as the European Convention on Human Rights. It may reasonably be argued, and even the lawmaker might agree, that human-rights commitments are only credible if they endure and override conflicting national legislation. Think, for example, of unintended humanrights breaches. Yet national legislation implementing international human-rights treaties in a dualist system is not necessarily superior in rank with respect to any other piece of national legislation. Thus, the lex posterior rule, and implied repeal in the UK (meaning that later law overrides earlier law) threaten to render earlier human- rights commitments obsolete. Both Germany and the UK therefore have found techniques how to circumnavigate the hierarchy dilemma, to take into account European human rights and still hold on to a dualist model with respect to treaties. The UK has incorporated the rights from the European Convention on Human Rights in a national statute, the Human Rights Act 1998, and allows judges to make known if they detect a violation by another statute (however they are still not allowed to disapply the statute for that reason). German courts take Convention rights into account when interpreting the rights enshrined in the Basic Law; the fact that the Basic Law anyway contains a human-rights catalogue that goes far beyond the minimum guarantees in the Convention already makes the issue less pressing. European Union Law For those states that are members of the European Union, the domestic effect of international treaties is no longer merely a question of monism or dualism. The European Community, the historical core branch of socio-economic integration since 1957, while still treaty-based, has been defined as a sui generis legal order: as one of its kind. The European Court of Justice (ECJ) has interpreted the law of the European Community as being capable of having ‘direct effect’ and ‘supremacy’ in the member states. With direct effect, individuals can invoke European law before national courts, without waiting for transposition; with supremacy, European law overrides all conflicting national provisions, no matter their rank. The novel thing, which distinguishes the Community from any other international organization in the world, is that direct effect and supremacy is taken to apply irrespective of whether the member state in question happens to be monist or dualist. No matter what the approach to ‘normal’ treaties is, the ECJ ruled, Community law possesses special qualities by virtue of its own special character. After all, the European common market goes far beyond any ordinary trade agreement; the treaty mentions not only the member states but also its people; it creates permanent institutions; and it gives the ECJ jurisdiction in preliminary rulings precisely so as to ensure uniform application of European law. Thus, in its breakthrough decision of Van Gend & Loos v. Nederlandse Administratie der Belastingen (26/62, [1963] ECR 1), the ECJ held: ‘The conclusion to be drawn from this is that the Community constitutes a new legal order of international law for the benefit of which the States have limited their sovereign rights, albeit within limited fields, and the subjects of which comprise not only Member States but also their nationals’. Thus, the Community was not considered to be based on a ‘normal’ treaty at all, but on one in which the member states have decided to share their sovereignty for the effective pursuit of rather ambitious common goals. In the follow-up case to Van Gend & Loos, namely Flaminio Costa v. ENEL (6/64, [1964] ECR 585, 593), the ECJ furthermore made clear that European law with direct effect had supremacy over conflicting national law: ‘The transfer by the States from their domestic legal system to the Community legal system of the rights and obligations arising under the [EEC] Treaty carries with it a permanent limitation of their sovereign rights, against which a subsequent unilateral act incompatible with the concept of the Community cannot prevail’. Later case-law specified that Community law overrides all conflicting national law, whenever and in whatever form adopted. The role of national judges is crucial to the uniform application of Community law in he member states. Indeed, judges must set aside all conflicting national provisions. In Administrazione delle Finanze dello Stato v. Simmenthal SpA (106/77, [1978] ECR 629), the ECJ confirmed the Van Gend & Loos and Costa doctrines, and added: ‘It follows from the foregoing that every national court must, in a case within its jurisdiction, apply Community law in its entirety and protect rights which the latter confers on individuals and must accordingly set aside any provision of national law which may conflict with it, whether prior or subsequent to the Community rule’. National judges must invalidate all national provisions incompatible with Com- munity law. They may, in turn, not invalidate secondary Community law, such as regulations and directives, on their own. As the ECJ held in Firma Foto-Frost v. Hauptzollamt LübeckOst (314/85, [1987] ECR 4199): ‘Since Article 177 [renumbered 230 EC] gives the [ECJ] exclusive jurisdiction to declare void an act of a Community institution, the coherence of the system requires that where the validity of a Community act is challenged before a national court the power to declare the act invalid must also be reserved to the Court of Justice’. If in doubt about the validity, or simply the correct interpretation, of Community law, both primary and secondary, national judges are free to halt proceedings and ask a preliminary question to the ECJ before resolving the case before them. Courts of last instance in principle even have to refer preliminary questions to the ECJ. Many national courts, in particular constitutional courts, disagree with such a farreaching and unconditional interpretation of the effect of European law as maintained by the ECJ. In their view, while European law indeed should enjoy direct effect and supremacy, these features must be accommodated into national constitutional law, and thus cannot be unconditional. France, for example, accepts direct effect and supremacy of European law, but only by virtue of France’s monism. Thus, treaty law does override ordinary legislation, but the French Constitution is above both. The constitutional courts of Italy and other member states also stress that there are certain core features of the domestic constitution which cannot be overridden by European law. Germany is famous for its case-law whereby a constant threat is in the air that the Federal Constitutional Court might strike down a piece of secondary European legislation as being incompatible with the Basic Law. In the Netherlands, direct effect and supremacy of European law poses no real conflict. Since the Netherlands is monist, and judges have no power of constitutional review anyway, the Dutch courts have no problem in pragmatically accepting the ECJ’s reasoning. In the UK, meanwhile, problems could not have been greater. Parliamentary sovereignty would seem incompatible with a system where, like the ECJ demands, a judge can set aside a national statute. In reality, European law does possess the qualities that the ECJ has interpreted it to have. The French qualifications on European law supremacy are largely academic; the German Constitutional Court has indicated that constitutional review of European law would not be exercised, and instead be reserved only for grave cases: a deterioration of human rights standards, but also an unlawful expansion of EU powers without authorization from the member states. Even the UK has found a way to reconcile parliamentary sovereignty with European law supremacy. Parliament, by freely deciding to join the Community, must have wanted to accept the relevant ECJ doctrines as part of the deal itself. Indeed, the European Community context is the only case where a UK judge may disapply an Act of Parliament. The European Union truly is a new legal order. It is just not unconditionally ECJ-driven. The complex interrelations between European and national law, and the ‘dialogue’ between European and national judges over fundamental doctrines, is part of the European order’s uniqueness. And European law is not somewhere ‘abroad’: in one way or another it is an integral part of the member states’ constitutions. No matter what the doctrinal embedding, it also affects the domestic relations between judge and lawmaker. After all, the judge has, or gains, ‘European’ review powers, while national legislation cannot stand if it violates European law. Summary Of the five systems under consideration, three (the US, France and Germany) allow courts or court-like institutions to review the constitutionality of legislation. In the US, review powers in concrete judicial disputes apply to all courts; in Germany the courts, and in France the two supreme courts, can refer questions regarding the constitutionality of legislation to a central institution. Abstract review of laws is possible in France (before promulgation) and in Germany (after promulgation), but impossible in the US. The constitutionality of legislation may not be questioned by judges in the UK or the Netherlands. The Netherlands does allow judges to check the compatibility between legislation and international treaty provisions, however; the same holds true for France and the US. The UK and Germany remain dualist with respect to treaty provisions.!
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