Judicial Review Pros And Cons

Same-sex marriage is now legal across all US states due to a recent ruling from the Supreme Court of America (reference). Judicial review is the authority of a court to repeal unconstitutional government laws and actions (textbook reference). Theoretically, judicial review is there to “protect[] the constitutional rights of individuals” from arbitrary powers of the government. In practice, the court’s ability to do that varies between countries based on their constitutions. Some courts are able to strike down legislations while others can only criticize them. However, there have been debates about how judicial review is undemocratic in nature. This paper aims to argue for the importance of judicial review by further analyzing its characteristics
Firstly, according to the Canada’s Department of Justice, the judicial system must be independent and impartial of any influence. This allows judges to effectively make decisions that are “based solely on fact and law” (Canada's Court System, 2015). Thus, the rule of law can be effectively enforced since everyone is equal under the law and there is no bias in the rulings. Secondly, as mentioned above, judicial review is a political instrument that can be used to protect individuals’ constitutional rights from arbitrary governmental power. By allowing the court to strike down unconstitutional legislations, it prevents the government from creating laws that harass and violate the rights of its citizens. The last and most controversial attribute of judicial review is that the judges are usually appointed by an elected body and not directly elected by the people. This is to further separate judges from politics since judicial behaviors can be influenced by the need for re-elections (Cohen, 2013). Thus, once appointed, it is difficult to remove judges since they need to be free of influences in order to effectively do their