Supermajority Voting In Constitutional Courts The Problem Of Majority Rule For Democracy And Legislation

This book challenges the wide use of majority rule in many constitutional courts for declaring statutes unconstitutional and argues that these courts should rather perform constitutional review by using supermajority rules. Considering that constitutional courts often tackle hard moral issues it is questionable whether a bare majority of judges should suffice for settling them especially considering these courts’ counter-majoritarian nature. Further the wide use of majority rule for checking the constitutionality of legislation may increasingly risk their reputation. Such a concern is developing in the United States following a series of Supreme Court decisions. This book argues that majority rule is unjustified in constitutional review. This means that in constitutional review considering majority rule’s traits there are no decisive reasons for using this voting rule over other voting rules. Additionally the book argues that when checking the constitutionality of legislation constitutional courts should replace majority rule with supermajority rules. Thus for declaring statutes unconstitutional it is argued that more than 50% of the judges present plus one judge present should be needed. This book will be of interest to academics researchers and policy-makers working in the areas of Constitutional Law and Politics. |Supermajority Voting in Constitutional Courts The Problem of Majority Rule for Democracy and Legislation