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Comparative Analysis of Federal High Courts: A Political Theory of Judicial Review

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 November 2009

André Bzdera
André Bzdera
Affiliation:
University of Montreal
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Abstract

Constitutionalists and political scientists often claim that federal high courts are neutral and impartial arbiters of federalism disputes. However, analysis of the political impact of nine federal high courts on the division of powers clearly indicates that such courts are best characterized as centralist and nationalist. This is largely the result of the strong institutional factors that link the federal high court to the political institutions of the central government, notably the process by which federal judges are appointed. The political theory of federalism must thus be modified to take into account the centralist function of judicial review.

Résumé

Des juristes et politologues prétendent souvent que la haute cour fédérale est une institution d'arbitrage neutre et équitable des «conflits fédéraux». Or l'analyse de l'effet politique de neuf hautes cours fédérales sur le partage du pouvoir législatif indique clairement que celles-ci manifestent toutes un parti pris centripète et nationaliste. Ce biais découle des facteurs institutionnels liant la haute cour aux institutions politiques du gouvernement central, notamment le processus de sélection des juges fédéraux. La théorie politique du fédéralisme doit par conséquent être modifiée afin de tenir compte de la fonction centripète du contrôle judiciaire de constitutionnalité.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Political Science/Revue canadienne de science politique , Volume 26 , Issue 1 , March 1993 , pp. 3 - 29
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Political Science Association (l'Association canadienne de science politique) and/et la Société québécoise de science politique 1993

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References

1 The most recent Canadian example of this literature is Swinton, Katherine E., The Supreme Court and Canadian Federalism (Toronto: Carswell, 1990), 8Google Scholar. Most general theories of judicial review are not without serious problems. See Tushnet, Mark, Red, White, and Blue: A Critical Analysis of Constitutional Law (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1988)Google Scholar; or Bakan, Joel, “Constitutional Arguments: Interpretation and Legitimacy in Canadian Constitutional Thought,” Osgoode Hall Law Journal 27 (1989), 123–93.Google Scholar

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5 This theory of judicial review is also found in most general works on Canadian politics that consider federalism and the Supreme Court. Swinton, , The Supreme Court, 2 and 15Google Scholar; Brooks, Stephen, Public Policy in Canada (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1989), 157Google Scholar; Russell, Peter H. et al. , Federalism and the Charter (Ottawa: Carleton University Press, 1989), 9Google Scholar; Russell, Peter H., The Judiciary in Canada (Toronto: McGraw-Hill Ryerson, 1987), 355Google Scholar; Gibbins, Roger, Conflict and Unity (Toronto: Methuen, 1985), 239Google Scholar; Hogg, Peter W., Constitutional Law of Canada (2nd ed.; Toronto: Carswell, 1985), 171Google Scholar; Russell, Peter H., “The Supreme Court and Federal-Provincial Relations,” Canadian Public Policy 11 (1985), 162–63CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Mackay, A. Wayne and Bauman, Richard W., “The Supreme Court of Canada,” in Beckton, C. F. and Mackay, A. W., eds., The Courts and the Charter (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1985), 76–77Google Scholar; Snell, James G. and Vaughan, Frederick, The Supreme Court of Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1985), 247Google Scholar; and Bernard, André, La Politique au Canada et au Québec (2nd ed.; Montréal: Presses de l'Université du Québec, 1980), 381Google Scholar. Most works refer to Hogg, “Is the Supreme Court of Canada Biased” and L'Écuyer, Gilbert, La Cour suprême du Canada et le partage des compétences 1949–1978 (Québec: Gouvernement du Québec, 1978)Google Scholar. This reference to L'Écuyer's study is, however, spurious, since his conclusions are far more ambivalent than Hogg, Russell, Stevenson and others would lead us to believe. Indeed, he argues that the Supreme Court is centralist when compared to the previous jurisprudence of the Privy Council, but that this new development is justified by what L'Écuyer considers to be the centralist nature of the British North America Act itself. Thus, from a political science standpoint, L'Écuyer's study supports the centralist theory of the Supreme Court's impact on Canadian federalism. See also Chaput, Roger, “La Cour suprême et le partage des pouvoirs,” Revue générale de droit 12 (1981), 35–82.Google Scholar

6 This question is more fully discussed in Bzdera, André, “L'analyse politique de la Cour suprême du Canada, perspectives québécoises,” Canadian Journal of Law and Society (forthcoming)Google Scholar. Peter Hogg's 1979 article (“Is the Supreme Court of Canada Biased”) is described as “une démonstration selon laquelle l'interprétation retenue par la Cour suprême est, sinon la meilleure, alors plausible dans les limites de la science juridique normative. Puisque toute interprétation peut se justifier d'une manière ou d'une autre, poser la question ainsi, c'est y répondre.”

7 See the sources cited in Vaughan, Frederick, “Critics of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council: The New Orthodoxy and an Alternative Explanation,” this Journal 19 (1986), 495–520Google Scholar; and in Cairns, Alan C., “The Judicial Committee and Its Critics,” this Journal 4 (1971), 301–45Google Scholar. Although the Privy Council gave rise to two divergent lines of judicial precedent (centralist and provincialist), it nevertheless consistently defended the principle of a federal division of legislative powers between two autonomous levels of government.

8 Alternatively, it can be argued that such “theories” are merely ideological constructs and that their authors have never intended that their writings be considered scientific. Such theories are often presented without any substantive discussion of alternative theoretical frameworks.

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14 Before the (post-Civil War) Reconstruction period, the Supreme Court had never invalidated an important federal law, but the Court had claimed the right to do so as early as 1803 in Marbury v. Madison, 1 Cranch 137 (1803)Google Scholar and had attempted to do so in Dred Scott v. Sandford, 19 How. 393 (1857). Kutler, Stanley I., Judicial Power and Reconstruction Politics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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17 See Dam, Kenneth, “The Legal Tender Cases,” The Supreme Court Review (1981), 367–412Google Scholar. After two new judicial nominations by President Grant, Hepburn v. Griswold of 1870 was reversed by The Legal Tender Cases of 1871. The power to create legal tender paper currency was withheld from both levels of government by the Constitution, and this understanding dominated nineteenth-century America. The use of “gold clauses” in private contracts from 1871 until forbidden by a more powerful federal government in 1933 (see Norman v. Baltimore & O.R.R. Co., 294 U.S. 240 [1935]Google Scholar) underscores this historical interpretation of monetary power in the United States.

18 For example, Lochner v. New York, 198 U.S. 45 (1905)Google Scholar or Hammer v. Dagenhart, 247 U.S. 251 (1918).Google Scholar

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20 The only exception to this rule, National League of Cities v. Usery, 426 U.S. 833 (1976)Google Scholar, was subsequently ignored by the Court and finally overruled in Garcia v. San Antonio Metropolitan Transit Authority, 469 U.S. 528 (1985).Google Scholar

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23 Herman Pritchett succinctly sums up this modern use of Marshall's opinions, especially his opinion in McCulloch v. Maryland of 1819. “The battle of strict construction was fought and lost in McCulloch v. Maryland, 1819” (The American Constitution [New York: McGraw-Hill, 1977], 536Google Scholar). See also Berger, Raoul, Government by Judiciary (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1977), 373–79.Google Scholar

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27 As Martin Shapiro aptly points out, “almost all the scholarly treatments of the modern Supreme Court have been produced either by active proponents of and participants in the New Deal or by its intellectual and political allies and successors” (Shapiro, Martin, “The Constitution and Economic Rights,” in Harmon, M. Judd, ed., Essays on the Constitution of the United States [New York: Kennikat, 1978], 74).Google Scholar

28 See, for example, Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations, Reflections on Garcia and Its Implications for Federalism (Washington: USPO, 1986)Google Scholar. The judges of the minority in the Garcia case have, however, vowed to overrule this decision at first opportunity.

29 It should perhaps be noted that the Privy Council's Canadian jurisprudence is largely congruent with the centralist hypothesis of courts of final appeal (in this case, of an Imperial Court), since the Privy Council's jurisprudence generally favoured the maintenance of the Empire (a weak Canadian federal government and the conservation of colonial appellate jurisdiction). See, for instance, Verney, Douglas V., Three Civilizations, Two Cultures, One State (Durham: Duke University Press, 1986), 149–71, 278–92.Google Scholar

30 For comments on the federal decision to abolish appeals to London, see Russell, Peter, “The Political Role of the Supreme Court of Canada in Its First Century,” Canadian Bar Review 53 (1975), 586–87Google Scholar; and Morin, Jacques-Yvan, “Le Québec et l'arbitrage constitutionnel: de Charybde en Scylla,” Canadian Bar Review 45 (1967), 614Google Scholar. On the history of the Supreme Court of Canada, see Snell, and Vaughan, , The Supreme Court of Canada.Google Scholar

31 MacGuigan, Mark R., “Precedent and Policy in the Supreme Court,” Canadian Bar Review 45 (1967), 627–65Google Scholar. Only well after the British House of Lords announced in 1966 its willingness to overrule precedents did the Supreme Court of Canada clearly overrule a Privy Council precedent (in 1978).

32 Earlier periods of Supreme Court history are not, however, devoid of interest (nor centralist tendencies). From 1875 to about 1890, the Supreme Court decided a few cases before the Privy Council had begun to develop its interpretation of Canadian constitutional law. The 1949–1965 period is also of interest. Consider the following centralist/nationalist decisions: Severn v. The Queen, [1878] 2 S.C.R. 70; Johannesson, [1952] 1 S.C.R. 292; or Saumur v. Québec, [1953] 2 S.C.R. 299.

33 Reference re Ownership of Off-Shore Mineral Rights, [1967] S.C.R. 792, and Reference re Continental Shelf Offshore Newfoundland, [1984] 1 S.C.R. 86. Brassard, Jacques, ed., Le territoire québécois (Montréal: Presses de l'Université de Montréal, 1970)Google Scholar; Head, Ivan L., “The Canadian Offshore Minerals Reference,” University of Toronto Law Journal 18 (1968), 131–57CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Tremblay, Guy, “The Supreme Court of Canada: Final Arbiter of Political Disputes,” in Lajoie, A. and Bernier, I., eds., The Supreme Court of Canada as an Instrument of Change (Toronto: University of Toronto Press for Supply and Services Canada, 1986), 179–209Google Scholar; and McWhinney, Edward, Québec and the Constitution 1960–1978 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1979), 20, 43.Google Scholar

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35 Most critical academic commentary provides support to the view that the primary political objective of the federal government was not the better protection of human rights in Canada, but rather was an expedient for imposing a language policy on Quebec, and more generally for promoting “national” social and economic values often at odds with those of Quebec Society. Furthermore, the Charter as finally enacted in 1982 has had a centralizing effect on Canadian federalism. As F. L. Morton writes, “The Supreme Court's Charter decisions are beginning to impose uniform national standards in policy areas that previously reflected regional diversity” (“The Political Impact of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedom,” this Journal 20 [1987], 44Google Scholar). See also Knopff, Rainer and Morton, F. L., “Nation-Building and the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms,” in Cairns, A. and Williams, C., eds., Constitutionalism, Citizenship and Society in Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press for Supply and Services Canada, 1985), 133–82Google Scholar; and Mandel, Michael, The Charter of Rights and the Legalization of Politics in Canada (Toronto: Wall and Thompson, 1989).Google Scholar

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62 For instance, the Uniform Tax Case, (1942)Google Scholar, 65 C.L.R. 373. For an overview of constitutional development of federalism in Australia, see Galligan, Brian, Politics of the High Court (St. Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 1987)Google Scholar; Coper, Michael, Encounters with the Australian Constitution (North Ryde: CCH Australia, 1987)Google Scholar; and Sawer, Geoffrey, Australian Federalism in the Courts (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1967).Google Scholar

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65 Financial Subsidies Case, [1975]Google Scholar 39 BVerfGE 96. See Kisker, Gunter, “The West German Federal Constitutional Court as Guardian of the Federal System,” Publius 19 (1989), 35–52Google Scholar; Kommers, Donald P., The Constitutional Jurisprudence of the Federal Republic of Germany (Durham: Duke University Press, 1989)Google Scholar, chap. 3; Orban, Edmond, “La Cour constitutionnelle fédérale et l'autonomie des Länder en République fédérale d'Allemagne,” Revue juridique Thémis 22 (1988), 37–60Google Scholar; Blair, Philip M., Federalism and Judicial Review in West Germany (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981).Google Scholar

66 In Canada, the Patriation Reference of 1981 allowed the federal government to adopt unilaterally a charter of rights applicable to the provinces; in the United States, judicial “incorporation” of the Bill of Rights into the Fourteenth Amendment applied the federal Bill to the States; and in the European Community, the Internationale Handelsgesellschaft case of 1970 announced the Court's intention to protect rights (in areas of Community competence) with reference to several international conventions and to the common judicial traditions of the Member States.

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68 See, for example, Petter, Andrew, “Federalism and the Myth of the Federal Spending Power,” Canadian Bar Review 68 (1989), 448–79Google Scholar; Kaden, , “Politics, Money, and State Sovereignty”Google Scholar; or Sandalow, Terrance, “The Expansion of Federal Legislative Authority,” in Sandalow and Stein, eds., Courts and Free Markets, 78–84.Google Scholar

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71 Most general comments in this section refer to the American, Canadian and European examples, unless otherwise stated.

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75 See Funston, Richard Y., “The Supreme Court and Critical Elections,” American Political Science Review 69 (1975), 791–811CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Dahl, Robert A., “Decision Making in a Democracy: The Supreme Court as a National Policy-Maker,” Journal of Public Law 6 (1957), 279–95.Google Scholar

76 Rasmussen, , On Law and Policy, 355–56Google Scholar. France wished to add two new judges for each of the big Member States (France, Britain, Germany and Italy). Presently, judges representing Member States with only 16 per cent of Community population can gain majority control of the Court.

77 Bzdera, André, “L'Accord du lac Meech et le nouveau mode de sélection des juges de la Cour suprême du Canada, une réforme chimérique?” Canadian Journal of Law and Society 4 (1989), 1–37.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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79 Schmidhauser, John R., The Supreme Court (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1960), 108–14Google Scholar; and Krislov, Samuel, The Supreme Court in the Political Process (New York: Macmillan, 1965), 55–56.Google Scholar

80 Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483 (1954)Google Scholar, and 349 U.S. 294 (1955); and United States v. Nixon, 418 U.S. 683 (1974)Google Scholar; and Hutchinson, Dennis, “Unanimity and Desegregation: Decision-making in the Supreme Court, 1948–1958,” Georgetown Law Journal 68 (1979), 1–96.Google Scholar

81 Sohier, Jérôme, “‘Vote secret’ ou ‘vote dissident’ (La pratique de la publication des opinions dissidentes au Tribunal constitutionnel fédéral allemand),” in Mélanges offerts à Raymond Vander Elst (Brussels: Éditions Nemesis, 1986), 755–68.Google Scholar

82 Russell, , The Judiciary in Canada, 351.Google Scholar

83 Tribe, Laurence, “Unraveling National League of Cities: The New Federalism and Affirmative Rights to Essential Government Services,” Harvard Law Review 90 (1977), 1065–1104.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

84 Wechsler, Herbert, “Political Safeguards of Federalism,” Columbia Law Review 54 (1954), 543–78CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Choper, , Judicial ReviewGoogle Scholar, chap. 4. This theory is now officially part of the Supreme Court's jurisprudence. Garcia v. San Antonio Metropolitan Transit Authority, 469 U.S. 528 (1985)Google Scholar. Yet, as is well known, the modern American Senate is today at best a central legislative body where disproportionate political influence is granted to electors of regions of the United States that are politically organized into small States. They no longer represent the “States” as political entities.

85 Particularly noteworthy are the writings of the two constitutionalists, Henri Brun and Guy Tremblay. The recent Supreme Court of Canada decisions General Motors and Crown Zellerbach are totally unacceptable to Brun and Tremblay, and indeed to most Québécois (Brun and Tremblay, Droit constitutionnel).

86 Amlund, Curtis A., “The Theory and Practice of Federalism in the Governmental Organization of the Confederate States of America” (Ph.D. Thesis, University of Minnesota, 1959), 264–69Google Scholar. This centralist vision of judicial power is also found in the Anti-Federalist papers (letter of Brutus, January 31, 1788) (Storing, Herbert, The Complete Anti-Federalist [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981]).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

87 This expression comes from the title of a 1921 French study on the United States Supreme Court: Lambert, Édouard, Le gouvernement des juges et la lutte contre la législation sociale aux États-Unis (Paris: Giard, 1921).Google Scholar

88 See also Vandycke, Robert, “Les droits de l'homme et leurs modes d'emploi: à propos de la charte constitutionnelle de 1982,” Sociologie et sociétés 18 (1986), 148–49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar