judicial tyranny

Nathan Newman nathan at newman.org
Wed May 16 10:01:58 PDT 2001


----- Original Message ----- From: "jean-christophe helary" <helary at niji.or.jp>

<Doug Henwood>-----
> So much for democracy. This is the price you pay for letting courts
> have enormous power to overturn laws on "constitutional" grounds.
-france has a constitutional court that checks all the laws and i get the feeling we get slightly more democracy -than you. maybe it is more that just courts ? maybe it's about them not being independant ? -does nathan have an opinion on the french way of doing ?

I'm not familiar with the details of French review of laws but many countries have courts review laws for their constitutionality, much as legislatures in the US often have legislative analysts do the same here. The question is what happens if the Court says the law is unconstitutional and the legislature passes it anyways.

If that happens in France, what happens to the law. And what procedures are there for removing judges if the legislature disagrees with them?

One thing I know about France is that the judicial system looks far more like the US civil service than like the system of political judicial appointees used in the US. That also makes a difference.

-- Nathan Newman



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