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A precedent is a principle or rule established in a previous legal case that is either binding on or persuasive without going to courts for a court or other tribunal when deciding subsequent cases with similar issues or facts. Common-law legal systems place great value on deciding cases according to consistent principled rules, so that similar facts will yield similar and predictable outcomes, and observance of precedent is the mechanism by which that goal is attained. The principle by which judges are bound to precedents is known as stare decisis. Common-law precedent is a third kind of law, on equal footing with statutory law and subordinate legislation in UK parlance – or regulatory law.
Separation of powers refers to the division of a state's government into branches, each with separate, independent powers and responsibilities, so that the powers of one branch are not in conflict with those of the other branches. The typical division is into three branches: a legislature, an executive, and a judiciary, which is sometimes called the trias politica model. It can be contrasted with the fusion of powers in parliamentary and semi-presidential systems where there can be overlap in membership and functions between different branches, especially the executive and legislative.
The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all U.S. federal court cases, and over state court cases that involve a point of federal law. It also has original jurisdiction over a narrow range of cases, specifically "all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, and those in which a State shall be Party." The court holds the power of judicial review, the ability to invalidate a statute for violating a provision of the Constitution. It is also able to strike down presidential directives for violating either the Constitution or statutory law. However, it may act only within the context of a case in an area of law over which it has jurisdiction. The court may decide cases having political overtones but has ruled that it does not have power to decide non-justiciable political questions.
Due process is the legal requirement that the state must respect all legal rights that are owed to a person. Due process balances the power of law of the land and protects the individual person from it. When a government harms a person without following the exact course of the law, this constitutes a due process violation, which offends the rule of law.
Judicial independence is the concept that the judiciary should be independent from the other branches of government. That is, courts should not be subject to improper influence from the other branches of government or from private or partisan interests. Judicial independence is important to the idea of separation of powers.
The tyranny of the majority is an inherent weakness to majority rule in which the majority of an electorate pursues exclusively its own objectives at the expense of those of the minority factions. This results in oppression of minority groups comparable to that of a tyrant or despot, argued John Stuart Mill in his 1859 book On Liberty.
Substantive due process is a principle in United States constitutional law that allows courts to establish and protect certain fundamental rights from government interference, even if procedural protections are present or the rights are unenumerated elsewhere in the U.S. Constitution. Courts have asserted that such protections come from the due process clauses of the Fifth and Fourteenth amendments to the U.S. Constitution, which prohibit the federal and state governments, respectively, from depriving any person of "life, liberty, or property, without due process of law". Substantive due process demarks the line between those acts that courts hold to be subject to government regulation or legislation and those that courts place beyond the reach of governmental interference. Whether the Fifth or Fourteenth Amendments were intended to serve that function continues to be a matter of scholarly as well as judicial discussion and dissent. Justice Clarence Thomas has called on the Supreme Court to reconsider all of its rulings that were based on substantive due process.
Majoritarianism is a traditional political philosophy or agenda that asserts that a majority of the population is entitled to a certain degree of primacy in society, and has the right to make decisions that affect the society. This traditional view has come under growing criticism, and liberal democracies have increasingly included constraints on what the parliamentary majority can do, in order to protect citizens' fundamental rights.
In United States constitutional law, a Due Process Clause is found in both the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution, which prohibits arbitrary deprivation of "life, liberty, or property" by the government except as authorized by law.
Sir John Grant McKenzie Laws was a Lord Justice of Appeal. He served from 1999 to 2016. He was the Goodhart Visiting Professor of Legal Science at the University of Cambridge, and an Honorary Fellow of Robinson College, Cambridge.
How Democratic is the American Constitution? is a book by political scientist Robert A. Dahl that discusses seven "undemocratic" elements of the United States Constitution.
A Concurrent Majority is a majority composed of majorities within various subgroups. As a system of government, it means that "major government policy decisions must be approved by the dominant interest groups directly affected ... each group involved must give its consent". There must be majority support within each affected group concurrently.
Judicial activism is a judicial philosophy holding that the courts can and should go beyond the applicable law to consider broader societal implications of its decisions. It is sometimes used as an antonym of judicial restraint. The term usually implies that judges make rulings based on their own views rather than on precedent. The definition of judicial activism and the specific decisions that are activist are controversial political issues. The question of judicial activism is closely related to judicial interpretation, statutory interpretation, and separation of powers.
John Edward Jones III is the 30th President at Dickinson College and a former United States District Judge of the United States District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania. He is best known for his presiding role in the landmark Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District case, in which the teaching of "intelligent design" in public school science classes was ruled to be unconstitutional. In 2014, he ruled that Pennsylvania's 1996 ban on same-sex marriage was unconstitutional. On May 14, 2021 it was announced that Judge Jones would serve as interim president of his alma mater Dickinson College for a two-year period beginning July 1, 2021. On February 28, 2022 President Jones was named the 30th President of Dickinson College.
Northern Pipeline Construction Company v. Marathon Pipe Line Company, 458 U.S. 50 (1982), is a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court held that Article III jurisdiction could not be conferred on non-Article III courts.
Liberal democracy is the combination of a liberal political ideology that operates under an indirect democratic form of government. It is characterised by elections between multiple distinct political parties, a separation of powers into different branches of government, the rule of law in everyday life as part of an open society, a market economy with private property, and the equal protection of human rights, civil rights, civil liberties and political freedoms for all people. To define the system in practice, liberal democracies often draw upon a constitution, either codified or uncodified, to delineate the powers of government and enshrine the social contract. After a period of expansion in the second half of the 20th century, liberal democracy became a prevalent political system in the world.
Judicial review is a process under which executive, legislative and administrative actions are subject to review by the judiciary. A court with authority for judicial review may invalidate laws, acts and governmental actions that are incompatible with a higher authority: an executive decision may be invalidated for being unlawful or a statute may be invalidated for violating the terms of a constitution. Judicial review is one of the checks and balances in the separation of powers: the power of the judiciary to supervise the legislative and executive branches when the latter exceed their authority. The doctrine varies between jurisdictions, so the procedure and scope of judicial review may differ between and within countries.
Matadeen v Pointu [1998] UKPC 9 is a constitutional law decision of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council on appeal from the Supreme Court of Mauritius. The case is relevant for English administrative law and concerns equal rights and protection under a constitution.
Separation of powers in Singapore is founded on the concept of constitutionalism, which is itself primarily based upon distrust of power and thus the desirability of limited government. To achieve this, the Constitution of the Republic of Singapore splits the power to govern the country between three branches of government – the legislature, which makes laws; the executive, which executes them; and the judiciary, which enforces them. Each branch, while wielding legitimate power and being protected from external influences, is subjected to a system of checks and balances by the other branches to prevent abuse of power. This Westminster constitutional model was inherited from the British during Singapore's colonial years.
Political process theory is a theory of judicial interpretation championed by American legal scholar John Hart Ely, which argues that judges should focus on maintaining a well-functioning democratic process and guard against systematic biases in the legislative process.
References
- ↑ ERIC GHOSH, Deliberative Democracy and the Countermajoritarian Difficulty: Considering Constitutional Juries, Oxford Journal of Legal Studies, Vol. 30, No. 2 (2010), pp. 327–359 doi:10.1093/ojls/gqq011.
- ↑ Judge John E. Jones III, Inexorably toward Trial: Reflections on the Dover Case and the “Least Dangerous Branch,” The Humanist, January/February 2009. "The Humanist - a magazine of critical inquiry and social concern". Archived from the original on 2011-06-13. Retrieved 2010-08-29..