Models of Constitutional Review

Abstract

Abstract Constitutional review is the power of a body, usually a court, to assess whether a law or government action complies with the constitution. Constitutional review has spread around the globe in recent decades, leading to a rise in scholarly work trying to understand the various institutional designs that have been deployed and utilized. The existing literature is largely focused on legal tradition, with France, Germany, and the United States providing a canonical triad of models. This chapter describes these models and their historical development. It then proposes new institutional dimensions to offer a typology of systems of constitutional review. The dimensions of focus include access, finality, and centralization. Using these institutional dimensions rather than legal tradition produces a distinct set of categorizations, destabilizing the classical paradigms of analysis. The chapter also notes how the development of supranational review has affected models of constitutional review, integrating national and supra-national levels into the institutional analysis.