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External WebsitesProfessor and Chair, Department of Political Science, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee. Coeditor of The Global Expansion of Judicial Power.
C. Neal Tate Fact-checked by The Editors of Encyclopaedia BritannicaEncyclopaedia Britannica's editors oversee subject areas in which they have extensive knowledge, whether from years of experience gained by working on that content or via study for an advanced degree. They write new content and verify and edit content received from contributors.
The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica Last Updated: Aug 10, 2024 • Article History Table of Contents
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judicial review, power of the courts of a country to examine the actions of the legislative, executive, and administrative arms of the government and to determine whether such actions are consistent with the constitution. Actions judged inconsistent are declared unconstitutional and, therefore, null and void. The institution of judicial review in this sense depends upon the existence of a written constitution.
The conventional usage of the term judicial review could be more accurately described as “constitutional review,” because there also exists a long practice of judicial review of the actions of administrative agencies that require neither that courts have the power to declare those actions unconstitutional nor that the country have a written constitution. Such “administrative review” assesses the allegedly questionable actions of administrators against standards of reasonableness and abuse of discretion. When courts determine challenged administrative actions to be unreasonable or to involve abuses of discretion, those actions are declared null and void, as are actions that are judged inconsistent with constitutional requirements when courts exercise judicial review in the conventional or constitutional sense.
Whether or not a court has the power to declare the acts of government agencies unconstitutional, it can achieve the same effect by exercising “indirect” judicial review. In such cases the court pronounces that a challenged rule or action could not have been intended by the legislature because it is inconsistent with some other laws or established legal principles.
Constitutional judicial review is usually considered to have begun with the assertion by John Marshall, fourth chief justice of the United States (1801–35), in Marbury v. Madison (1803), that the Supreme Court of the United States had the power to invalidate legislation enacted by Congress. There was, however, no express warrant for Marshall’s assertion of the power of judicial review in the actual text of the Constitution of the United States; its success rested ultimately on the Supreme Court’s own ruling, plus the absence of effective political challenge to it.
Constitutional judicial review exists in several forms. In countries that follow U.S. practice (e.g., Kenya and New Zealand), judicial review can be exercised only in concrete cases or controversies and only after the fact—i.e., only laws that are in effect or actions that have already occurred can be found to be unconstitutional, and then only when they involve a specific dispute between litigants. In France judicial review must take place in the abstract (i.e., in the absence of an actual case or controversy) and before promulgation (i.e., before a challenged law has taken effect). In other countries (e.g., Austria, Germany, South Korea, and Spain) courts can exercise judicial review only after a law has taken effect, though they can do so either in the abstract or in concrete cases. Systems of constitutional judicial review also differ in the extent to which they allow courts to exercise it. For example, in the United States all courts have the power to entertain claims of unconstitutionality, but in some countries (e.g., France, Germany, New Zealand, and South Africa) only specialized constitutional courts can hear such claims.
A number of the constitutions drafted in Europe and Asia after World War II incorporated judicial review in various forms. For example, in France, where the Cour de Cassation (the highest court of criminal and civil appeal) has no power of judicial review, a constitutional council (Conseil Constitutionnel) of mixed judicial-legislative character was established; Germany, Italy, and South Korea created special constitutional courts; and India, Japan, and Pakistan set up supreme courts to exercise judicial review in the manner generally used in the United States and in the British Commonwealth.
After World War II many countries felt strong pressure to adopt judicial review, a result of the influence of U.S. constitutional ideas—particularly the idea that a system of constitutional checks and balances is an essential element of democratic government. Some observers concluded that the concentration of government power in the executive, substantially unchecked by other agencies of government, contributed to the rise of totalitarian regimes in Germany and Japan in the era between World War I and World War II. Although judicial review had been relatively uncommon before World War II, by the early 21st century more than 100 countries had specifically incorporated judicial review into their constitutions. (This number does not include the United States, whose constitution still includes no mention of the practice.)
