 Lisa Hilbink, Assessing the New Constitutionalism Initial scholarly exuberance over the global spread of bills of rights and judicial review has given way to a spate of studies that bemoan the trend as fundamentally antidemocratic. This review offers an empirically informed critique of these new, more skeptical studies. It highlights ways in which selection and tenure rules for high court judges vary across cases, describes a number of institutional mechanisms designed to mitigate judicial supremacy in different countries, and offers examples of the ways that some new constitutionalist countries have sought to facilitate popular access to courts and to charge courts with protecting popular interests. More comparative work on the effects of this variation on political practice and policy outcomes would be welcome. |