The Decentralized Model Of The United States Constitution Of 1787

On July 26, 1718, the Parliament of Paris declared to the King that, in the future, it will accept to register only edicts and other laws not contrary to the King and the State’s interests and to the fundamental Laws of the Kingdom. As of this date, constitutional review became a permanent feature of political and legal debates, whether in the eyes of the liberals, a claim for a better protection of individual liberties against the State or, for the advocates of the sovereignty of the law, a scarecrow.

Judicial review is a widespread practice today, carried out in most legal systems. It is based on the idea that some acts of the law-making powers require to be subordinated to higher, longer-lasting values. Initially, institutions relied on

The American, decentralized model of constitutional review, or the Common Law model, was not initially provided for in the United States Constitution of 1787. The text only laid down the creation of a Supreme Court of the judiciary, which was therefore not originally charged with controlling the constitutionality of laws passed by Congress. Nevertheless, this jurisdiction itself recognized such prerogative in the decision Marbury v. Madison of February 1803. In this case, Chief Justice Marshall asserted that it would be the role of the judicial branch of the government to ensure the supremacy of the United States Constitution over ordinary legislation. He affirmed that “it is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is.” This famous decision gave the entire judiciary the duty of constitutional control, creating a diffused or decentralized model of control of praetorian origin. All judges at each level of the judiciary are authorized to carry out this review, it is part of their ordinary obligations. The constitutional decisions of these judges can be appealed to the Supreme Court of the United States, which ultimately ensures the consistency and unity of

Indeed, in the global upsurge of constitution-making that has been taking place and fueling comparative law studies since the end of the twentieth century, the creation of constitutional courts has been virtually universal. Such courts have become a key part of the standard model of constitutional transitions towards democracy. Yet, when observing the recent changes in the judicial review process of the Constitution and in the duties of the Constitutional Council in the centralized system of France, it seems that there is a progressive shift in the direction of a more decentralized constitutional