The politics of constitutional review in France and Europe

International Journal of Constitutional Law

Volumn 5, Issue 1, 2007, Pages 69-92

  Sweet, Alec Stone ^a  

^a YALE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 33846323289     PISSN: 14742640     EISSN: 14742659     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1093/icon/mol041     Document Type: Article

References (87)

1. During this period, Professor Favoreu also wrote the (quasi-official) commentaries on constitutional jurisprudence for the Revue du droit public, then a role of strategic significance.
2. The Revue du droit public was founded in 1884, not least in order to increase the political legitimacy of French public law. See Ferdinand Larnaud, Notre programme [Our Program] 1 Revue du Droit Public [R.D.P.] 3, 3-4 (1894).
3. The constitutions of the Third and Fourth Republics enshrined legislative sovereignty - they prohibited judicial review and they neither contained charters of rights nor provided for a constitutional court. Parliament could revise the constitution by majority vote. During the Third Republic, scholars sometimes argued that parliament behaved as a kind of constitutional judge whenever it debated the lawfulness of its own activities, which it could do under the question préalable procedure. Marcel Waline, Eléments d'une théorie de la juridiction constitutionnelle [Elements of a Theory of Constitutional Jurisdiction], 45 R.D.P. 449 (1928). The constitution of the Fourth Republic provided for an internal review mechanism, in the form of a Constitutional Committee, but that body never produced a decision.
4. See Alec Stone, The Birth of Judicial Politics in France 23-45 (Oxford Univ. Press 1992).
5. Nationalisation et Constitution [Nationalization and the Constitution] (Louis Favoreu ed., Economica 1982)
6. Louis Favoreu, Décentralisation et constitution [Decentralization and the Constitution], 98 R.D.P. 1259 (1982).
7. Alec Stone Sweet, Governing with Judges: Constitutional Politics in Europe (Oxford Univ. Press 2000)
8. Martin Shapiro & Alec Stone Sweet, eds., The New Constitutional Politics of Europe, 26 Comp. Pol. Stud. 397-420 (1994).
9. See, especially, Louis Favoreu, La Politique Saisie par le Droit [Politics Captured by Law] (Economica 1988)
10. Louis Favoreu, La Légitimité du juge constitutionnel [The Legitimacy of the Constitutional Judge], 2 Revue Internationale de Droit comparatif 557 (1994).
11. This effort was substantially aided by the Conseil itself, which modernized and began networking with other European constitutional courts under the tenure of its president, Robert Badinter (1986-1995), and its secretary-general, Bruno Genevois.
12. Louis Favoreu, Les Cours Constitutionnelles [Constitutional Courts] (Presses universitaires de France 1986).
13. Louis Favoreu, L'apport du Conseil constitutionnel an droit public [The Influence of the Constitutional Council on Public Law], 13 Pouvoirs 17, 17-26 (1980)
14. Louis Favoreu, Le Droit constitutionnel, droit de la constitution et constitution du droit [Constitutional Law, Law of the Constitution, and Constitution of the Law], 1 Revue Française de Droit Constitutionnel [R.F.D.C.] 71 (1990).
15. Stone Sweet, Governing With Judges, supra note 5, at 92-126.
16. Hans Kelsen, La garantie juridictionnelle de la Constitution [The Jurisdictional Protection of the Constitution], 44 R.D.P. 197 (1928).
17. In the most widely used formulation, Easton defined "politics" as those processes and behaviors that impinge on "the authoritative allocation of values." David Easton, An Approach to the Analysis of Political Systems, 9 World Pol. 383 (1956).
18. Richard Hodder-Williams, Six Notions of 'Political' and the United States Supreme Court, 22 Brit. J. Pol. Sci. 1, 3 (1992).
19. Favoreu, Nationalisation, supra note 4, at 23.
20. Louis Favoreu, Conseil constitutionnel: Mythes et réalites [The Constitutional Council: Myths and Realities], 19 Regards sur l'Actualite, June 1987
21. Favoreu, La Politique Saisie, supra note 6, at 15, 73.
22. In this paper, I do not discuss the extent to which appointment procedures, the partisan affiliation of judges, and the decision rules of constitutional courts have influenced the development of constitutional law in Europe. These factors have surely mattered, but how much remains a mystery. The issue poses fierce methodological difficulties, and virtually no sophisticated comparative work on it has yet been produced.
23. Alec Stone Sweet, Judicialization and the Construction of Governance, 32 Comp. Pol. Stud. 147 (1999).
24. Douglas North, Institutions, Institutional Change, and Economic Performance (Cambridge Univ. Press 1990)
25. James G. March & Johan P. Olsen, Rediscovering Institutions 21-38 (Free Press 1989)
26. Neil Fligstein & Alec Stone Sweet, Constructing Polities and Markets: An Institutionalist Account of European Integration, 107 Am. J. Soc. 1206 (2002).
27. Alec Stone Sweet, Path Dependence, Precedent, and Judicial Power, in On Law, Politics, and Judicialization 112-135 (Martin Shapiro & Alec Stone Sweet eds., Oxford Univ. Press 2002).
28. This is true even where constitutional review is relatively weak, as in Russia.
29. George Tsebelis, Nested Games (Univ. Calif. Press 1990).
30. These points have been debated more technically, with reference to the French system, in the exchange between Georg Vanberg and Alec Stone Sweet. Georg Vanberg, Abstract Judicial Review, Legislative Bargaining, and Policy Compromise, 3 J. Theoretical Pol. 299 (1998)
31. Alec Stone Sweet, Rules, Dispute Resolution, and Strategic Behavior: Reply to Vanberg, 10 J. Theoretical Pol. 327 (1998).
32. See generally Stone Sweeet, Governing with Judges supra note 5.
33. Constitutional review is effective to the extent that the important constitutional disputes that arise in the polity are litigated, that the constitutional court seeks to resolve these disputes through defensible reasons, and that those who are governed by the constitutional law accept the court's case law as authoritative.
34. Most agreements of any complexity are generated by what organizational economists call "relational contracting." The parties to an agreement seek to broadly "frame" their relationship, by agreeing on a set of basic "goals and objectives," fixing outer limits on acceptable behavior, and establishing procedures for "completing" the contract over time. Paul Milgrom & John Roberts, Economics, Organization, and Management 127-133 (Prentice-Hall International 1992).
35. H.L.A. Hart, The Concept of Law (Clarendon 1994) (1961).
36. See Giandomenico Majone, Two Logics of Delegation: Agency and Fiduciary Relations in EU Governance, 2 Eur. Union Pol. 103, 104-113 (2001).
37. Alec Stone Sweet, Constitutional Courts and Parliamentary Democracy, 25 W. Eur. Pol. 77 (2002).
38. Stone Sweet, Governing with Judges, supra note 5
39. Travaux Préparatoires de la Constitution du 4 Octobre 1958 [Travaux Préparatoirs for the Constitution of October 4, 1958] (Documentation française 1960).
40. For the Fourth Republic, see especially Débats du 7 Mars, 1946, Assemblée nationale constituante [National Constituent Assembly], 607-639.
41. For the Fifth Republic, see Travaux Préparatoires, supra note 29, at 101-102.
42. Council Decision 71-44, Recueil des Decisions du Conseil Constitutionnel [Collected Decisions of the Constitutional Council] 29 (1971).
43. Council Decision 79-10, Recueil des Decisions du Conseil Constitutionnel [Collected decisions of the Constitutional Council] 33 (1979).
44. Since 1981, the opposition has referred about one-third of ordinary legislation adopted, an extraordinary ratio given the fact that most bills passed are not controversial (or subjected to a roll call vote). Referrals have a high rate of success: Since 1981, more than half of all referrals ended in some form of annulment by the Conseil. Statistics reported in Stone Sweet, supra note 17, at 184.
45. See, for example, the leading treatise on constitutional law, Maurice Duverger, Institutions Politiques et Droit Constitutionnel [Political Instutions and Constitutional Law] 634-635 (Presses Univ. de France, 1962).
46. Stone Sweet, Governing with Judges, supra note 5, at 93-116
47. Michael Davis, The Law/Politics Distinction, the French Conseil Constitutionnel, and the U.S. Supreme Court, 34 Am. J. Comp. L. 45 (1986).
48. Favoreu, Conseil constitutionnel: Mythes et réalites, sura note 15
49. Favoreu, la Politique Saisie, supra note 6.
50. Stone Sweet, Governing with Judges, supra note 5, at 209-221
51. Alec Stone Sweet, Where Judicial Politics are Legislative Politics: The French Constitutional Council, 15 W. Eur. Pol. 29 (1992).
52. Kelsen, supra note 11.
53. Kelsen's ideas came to France mainly through the doctoral thesis of Charles Eisenmann. Charles Eisenmann, La Justice Constitutionnelle et la Haute Cour Constitutionnelle d'Autriche [Constitutional Justice And The Austrian Constituitonal Court] (Economica 1986) (1928). Eisenmann, a close student of Hans Kelsen's, argued in favor of a specialized constitutional court. Until the 1970s, his work was largely ignored. Today it is viewed as seminal in France.
54. Kelsen, supra note 11, at 221-241.
55. Although this point will not be explored further, the position of many scholars and constitutional judges, is that rights possess a kind of supraconstitutional status (their contents can not be altered by constitutional revision), which is akin to a natural law position. See, Table ronde: Révision de la Constitution et justice constitutionnelle [Roundtable: Reviewing the Constitution and Constitutional Justice], 10 Annuaire International de Justice Constitutionnelle 27-282 (1995).
56. Alexandre von Brünneck, Le Contrôle de Constitutionnalité et le Législateur dans les Démocraties [The Check of Constitutionality and the Lawmaker in Democracies], 4 Annuaire International de Justice Constitutionnelle 15-49 (1988).
57. Favoreu, La Légitimité du juge constitutionnel, supra note 6.
58. Édouard Lambert, Le Gouvernement des Juges et la Lutte contre la Legislation Sociale aux Etats-Unis [The Government of Judges and the Struggle Against Social Legislation in the United States] (Marcel Giard 1921)
59. Michael Davis, A Government of Judges: An Historical Re-View, 35 Am. J. Comp. L. 559 (1987).
60. In 1986, Jacques Robert (University of Paris law professor, then editor of the Revue du droit public, and later a member of the Conseil) responded to the Chirac government's accusation that the Conseil had developed far from the limited role which the founders had given to it as follows: "The terms of the Preamble state that the constitutional judge was, from the Conseil's creation, invested with the responsibility [la mission] to declare if a law voted by parliament...conforms or not to the liberties, rights, and principles contained in the texts explicitly and solemnly recalled by the Preamble." La Croix, Sept. 3, 1986, at 1.
61. Georges Vedel, Neuf ans au Conseil constitutionnel [Nine Years on the Constitutional Council], 55 Le Débat 49 (1989).
62. See also Louis Favoreu, Les cent premieres annulations prononcées par le Conseil constitutionnel [The First Hundred Annulments pronounced by the Constitutional Council], 103 R.D. P. 442, 445-447 (1987).
63. Stone Sweet, Where Judicial Politics are Legislative Politics, supra note 37.
64. Favoreu, La Politique Saisie, supra note 6
65. Favoreu, La Légitimité du juge constitutionnel, supra note 6.
66. Stone Sweet, Governing with Judges, supra note 5, at 93-115, 147-172, 173-208.
67. Favoreu disagreed. Favoreu, La Politique Saisie, supra note 6, at 73.
68. Christine Landfried, Bundesverfassungsgericht und Gesetzgeber [The Constitutional Court and the Legislator] (Nomos 1984)
69. Martin Shapiro & Alec Stone Sweet eds., Special Issue: The New Constitutional Politics of Europe, 26 Comp. Pol. Stud. (1994)
70. Mary Volcansek, ed., Special Issue: Judicial Politics in Western Europe, 15 W. Eur. Pol. (1992)
71. Mary Volcansek, Constitutional Politics in Italy (Macmillan 2000)
72. Georg Vanberg, Legislative-Judicial Relations: A Game-Theoretic Approach to Constitutional Review, Am. J. Pol. Sci. 45 (2001), 346-361
73. Georg Vanberg, The Politics of Constitutional Review in Germany (Cambridge Univ. Press 2004).
74. This section is based on Stone Sweet, Governing with Judges, supra note 5, at 61-126.
75. The term was coined by Louis Favoreu. Favoreu, Décentralisation, supra note 4.
76. In Germany, the phenomenon has been studied extensively by Lanfried, supra note 49.
77. The German government was urged to do so by its parliamentary supporters after the 1975 abortion ruling, and the French government considered doing so in reaction to the nationalization decisions (1981-1982).
78. I know of only one important instance: In 1993, the French constitution was revised to enable the adoption of a law, previously annulled in important respects, on immigration and asylum.
79. For a fuller discussion see Stone Sweet, Governing with Judges, supra note 5, at 31-60.
80. Christian Behrendt, Le Juge Constitutionnel, Un Législateur-Cadre Positif [The Constitutional Judge: A Positive Lawmaker-Framework] (2005) (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Paris I).
81. Id. at 431-456.
82. Literature cited in Stone Sweet, Governing with Judges, supra note 5, at 114-125.
83. See also Mattias Kumm, Who is Afraid of the Total Constitution? Constitutional Rights as Principles and the Constitutionalization of Private Law, 7 Germ. L.J. 1 342 (2006).
84. There exists no systematic research on the phenomenon.
85. Robert Alexy, A Theory of Constitutional Rights (Oxford Univ. Press 2002)
86. Giovanni Sartori, A Formal Model of Legal Argumentation, 7 Ratio Juris 177 (1994)
87. Stone Sweet, supra note 19.