Comparative Judicial Review and Public Policy.

The study of politics is quintessential the study of public policy and vice versa. Volumes have been published analyzing the inputs, processes, and outputs of policymakers in the executive and legislative branches of local and national governments at home and abroad. Yet, far too many social scientists (including some public policy scholars) for far too many years have questioned the inclusion of public law scholarship in the study of political science. If the seminal 1955 works of Jack Peltason (Federal Courts in the Political Process) and Victor G. Rosenblum (Law as a Political Instrument) and all that have come since have left some unpersuaded of the importance of public law to the study of public policy and political science, then perhaps it is asking too much that a single volume accomplish that task. Yet, if there is a volume capable of doing so, this may be it.

Jackson and Tate's goal, admirably achieved, is to "help students of judicial review and public policy revise their assumption of [judicial review's] exceptional and American character, and establish a more accurate picture of its worldwide significance" (p. 4). The establishment, exercise, extent, and political impact of judicial review are examined in the nation-states of Japan (Danelski), Canada (Russell), Western Europe (Stone), the Soviet Union (Kitchin), India (Baar), Italy (Volcansek), the Philippines (Tate), Sweden (Stjernquist), the United Kingdom (Sunkin), and Israel (Edelman).

Each chapter is generally comprehensive, well-documented, and informational in its discussion of the political factors antecedent to and contemporary with the creation and exercise of judicial review. Unlike many other edited works which suffer from a lack of cohesiveness, the chapters as a whole mesh well in analyzing the importance of judicial review in the development and maintenance of democratic government and its profound policy effects on each individual nation's polity whether in terms of individual policy outputs by the courts (Canada), its legitimation of the policies of other government institutions (the Philippines and Sweden), or its prophylactic efforts on the policy-making discretion of elected and appointed officials (the United Kingdom and France).

In many ways, the most exceptional and useful chapter of this work is the introduction by Tate. This chapter, which alone is sufficient reason to purchase and read the book, seeks to examine the various forms that judicial review has taken around the world. Classifications are drawn between judicial review that is constitutional or administrative; direct or indirect; a priori or a posteriori; abstract or concrete; all courts or only constitutional courts; and coercive or advisory. It would be relatively easy, although Tate has chosen not to do so, to create a typology into which one could place the nations of the world which have some form of judicial review. A concluding chapter by Jackson presents a fascinating framework for the analysis of judicial review that is both thought-provoking and highly theoretical but which appears somewhat misplaced in a descriptive work of this type.

The work suffers from only a few shortcomings, none of which could be considered fatal. As the editors themselves note, these are essentially case studies that fail to offer any systematic empirical analyses of judicial review and which, with the exceptions of Japan, India, and the Philippines, are limited to Europe and North America. Obviously, future work must bridge these gaps in our understanding of the importance of the exercise of judicial review on the making of public policies around the world. Additionally,l it would have been helpful to have had a concluding chapter that provided a comprehensive theory of the political and environmental preconditions necessary in a nation-state for the establishment and maintenance of each type of judicial review. However, overall this work makes a significant contribution to our understanding of the importance of judicial review to the making of public policy among the governments of the world and should be read by any serious scholar of comparative political science, public policy, and public law.

Michael W. Bowers
University of Nevada, Las Vegas