JUDICIAL REVIEW IN INDIA AND THE U.S.A.
SUBMITTED BY:
SUDESHNA AKANKSHA PANDA
1ST YEAR 2ND SEMESTER
KIIT LAW SCHOOL
CONTENTS PAGES 1. The meaning of Judicial Review ……………………………..3 2. The origin of Judicial Review …………………………………4 3. Judicial Review in India………………………………………..9 4. Judicial Review in the U.S.A.………………………………….18 5. Conclusion…………………………………………….………..23 6. Bibliography……………………………………………………25
MEANING OF JUDICIAL REVIEW:
Judicial review is 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.
Justice Balakrishnan opined that, “judicial review safeguards civil and political rights of individuals and sometimes controls the power of every organ of the state.”
The conventional usage of the term judicial review could be more accurately described as “constitutional review,” because there also exists a long practice neither 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 judge 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 the constitutional sense.