Judicial Review in Europe

The years following the Second World War witnessed a wave of constitution making in Europe. In East and West alike, popular government was instituted through new basic laws. But whereas the constitutions of Eastern Europe established a Rousseauistic form. of democracy through the creation of an omnipotent legislature, those of the West, while reflecting a belief in parliamentary government, to a larger or smaller degree limited the power of the legislature through the introduction of judicial review. This acceptance of judicial review can be attributed mainly to two factors.

It sprung from a distrust of a parliamentarism under which, during the previous decades, a Mussolini, a Hitler, and a Petain were able to rise to power, and was a consequence of the revival of natural law against the juridical positivism of the past generations.