Judicial Approach To Interpretation Of Constitution
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Judicial Approach to Interpretation of Constitution
Author: Ijaiya, Hakeem Olasunkanmi
language: en
Publisher: Malthouse Press
Release Date: 2017-05-05
This book, Judicial Approach to Interpretation of Constitution: A Study of Nigeria, Australia, Canada and India, is the outcome of a doctoral study of the judicial interpretation of the constitutions in selected Commonwealth jurisdictions, and a survey of the theories of constitutional interpretation and adjudication, the rules applied by the courts in the interpretation of the provisions of the constitutions, and determined the extent to which the existing approaches to the interpretation of the constitution have hindered the development of constitutional jurisprudence in those countries. In all, the statutes and constitutions are expressed in English language and some words are prone to distortions, thereby requiring the need for the courts to discover the intention of the legislators when interpreting such statutes and constitutions. It is further observed that the theories and rules of interpretation currently adopted by the courts are conflicting, and this is partly due to vagueness and also that in many cases, where a rule appears to support a particular interpretation, there is another rule, often of equal status, which can be invoked in favour of an interpretation which could lead to different result. The general conclusion is that the existing approaches to constitutional interpretation are somewhat inefficient and inadequate to enable the courts to effectively discover the intention of the legislators, and therefore the courts should be allowed to examine all relevant parliamentary documents and debates.
The Constitution in the Courts
This work, covering the constituion of the courts in the US, should be suitable for legal and political science scholars, especially those interested in constitutional adjudication
Is an originalist approach to constitutional interpretation legitimate?
Seminar paper from the year 2012 in the subject Politics - Region: USA, grade: 77%, Birkbeck, University of London, course: American Politics, language: English, abstract: Under Article III, Section 2 of the United States Constitution, the US Supreme Court is designated as the final court of appeal for all cases arising under the Laws, Treaties, and Constitution of the United States (U.S. Const. art. III, § 2). Although the Supreme Court’s role in determining the constitutional legitimacy of those cases brought before it is not explicitly defined, this (largely unchallenged) authority became clear during the foremost years of the republic. In his opinion on Marbury v. Madison (1803), Chief Justice Marshall noted that it was ‘emphatically the province and duty of the Judicial Department to say what the law is.’ Constitutional interpretation addresses ‘how the meaning of the constitution should be discerned, thus allowing the application of substantive constitutional law to a particular set of facts or issues’ (Thomas, 2011:1). Given the ambiguity of its language and the fact that the Constitution is a legal document written, for the most part, in 1787 under very different circumstances from today, this is a challenging undertaking and not without controversy. Indeed, the task of constitutional interpretation, and the different approaches taken by individual judges, is a major area of debate among the judiciary, the populace, and within the political and academic arenas. The position judges adopt vis-à-vis constitutional interpretation lies at the centre of court rulings concerning constitutional law. Since individual judges will have different opinions, constitutional interpretation is unavoidably dependent on the subjective views of the judges involved, whether they be legalistic, attitudinal, or other views along Posner’s spectrum of theoretical influences on judicial behaviour (Posner, 2008). This difference in approaches has been the driver of the politicisation of the judiciary and partly explains the often fractious nature of judicial confirmations. While there is no consensus regarding a singular taxonomy for constitutional interpretation, most scholars agree on the differentiation between the Originalist approach (sometimes referred to, supportively, as the Interpretivist approach) favoured by Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, and other non-Originalist approaches (often referred to as non-Interpretivist approaches by their detractors). This essay considers whether the Originalist approach is the only legitimate and appropriate method of constitutional interpretation in the United States today.