The Role of the Judiciary in the Integration Process of the United States of America and the European Union The aim of this thesis is to describe the integration process of both the European Union and the United States of America and to depict the most crucial role the judiciary had. The thesis will explain how courts can in general substitute the other branches of power, usually when the latter are inactive or even unwilling to act. Both ways how the European Court of Justice (working together with national courts) and the Supreme Court of the United States have influenced or even enabled successful union-making policy will be compared. One of the most surprising facts might be that the Supreme Court had rather an auxiliary role in turning the Union into a strong entity, while the Court of Justice most likely was a real European integration leader. The thesis presents number of specific examples or cases how both courts not only created legal rules but also came up with policy-making decisions, which has significantly changed the given community and lives of all citizens in it. It can be concluded that from nowadays perspective, both courts enjoy great power and prestige. Obviously, the SCOTUS is being regarded as the stronger one from those two. However, such a view might not be entirely accurate...

A devotion to an open and progressive interpretation of human rights and the law secured Judge Ronald N. Davies’ legacy as an unintended, yet influential activist for advancing civil rights and of the twentieth century. His views helped change the definition and meaning of judicial activism in the modern vernacular and transform it into a new notion of judicial progressivism. A biography of Davies crystallizes the meaning of the racial and civil relations across an evolving American landscape. A study of his life alters the way in which scholars and the public perceive and understand the role of the Northern Plain in shaping lasting changes in America’s progressive movements through an interdisciplinary approach of history and law. When Davies of Fargo, North Dakota, rose to the bench of the United States District Court, he ceased any formal political party affiliation and became a Constitutionalist. With an egalitarian approach to the law, he oversaw numerous court proceedings and handed down rulings with measured consideration for any case that appeared on his docket. As his federal appointment came to include cases involving the desegregation of public schools, civil lawsuits against large-scale corporations, and the Alcatraz Indian Occupation, Davies’ sphere of influence exceeded regional and Civil Rights Era boundaries and characterized him as national figure in new facets of legal precedent. His rulings challenged traditional ethics as dictated by society’s majority-consent in the law and cast him as a seminal figure that embodied the meaning and influence of the northern plains within the law and advancing civil rights and social justice in the United States. His efforts to uphold a more inclusive and equal legal standard set into motion renewed consideration of the ways in which an individual’s actions within a broader institution can stimulate a modern national consensus despite entrenched historical precedent. Therefore, Davies’ life and career reflect a historical sensibility of the role, application, and influence of law-based code of ethics. His decisions, though not intended as overt civil activism, instilled lasting social, cultural, and political change in twentieth-century civil rights.

Having a large amount of social and institutional trust is a goal for big democratic states like Sweden. Women have more confidence in the Swedish judiciary, but the trust can vary along different class variables such as gender, age, education level, income level, and political opinion. Using data from the European Social Survey, this paper is a quantitative study of those various class factors in connection to women's trust in the judiciary and the police. By analyzing the variables in both a bivariate standard linear regression and a multivariate regression analysis, this thesis's purpose is to see how the variables collaborate. The data were analyzed with Putnam and Rothstein's theory about social trust, institutional trust, and Bourdieu's class theory.  Results show that not all variables affect a woman's trust in the judiciary and police. Their income and education level have a strong significant correlation with a woman's trust in the judiciary. Only the income variable has a significant correlation with confidence for the police when all variables are used in the analysis. The other variables have little to no correlation with the dependent variables and are not significant.

Decision, intervention and inaction of an administrative authority and choice of a type of action The topic of the thesis is the analysis of the basic triad of types of actions applied in administrative judiciary, i.e. action against the decision, intervention and inaction of the administrative authority, as well as their blurred boundaries and the problems arising therefrom. The aim of the thesis is to present the given matters comprehensively, therefore it discusses not only the types of actions themselves, but also the administrative judiciary as such, the basic terms distinguishing the individual types of actions and an attempt to present possible solutions eliminating the problems arising from the necessity of choosing the type of action. The thesis consists of an introduction, three chapters and a conclusion. The first chapter is devoted to administrative judiciary and is further divided into six subchapters. The first subchapter is devoted to the basic types of administrative judiciary, on the basis of which the term of administrative judiciary itself is defined in the following text of this subchapter, which is followed by an introduction of the purpose of administrative judiciary in the third subchapter. The fourth subchapter is then devoted to the history of administrative judiciary and...

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Traditionally, systems of constitutional democracy fell into two categories: parliamentary sovereignty, characterized by the omnipotence of Parliament and the absence of any substantive limitations on its power; and judicial supremacy, characterized by the presence of restrictions on legislative power in the form of a judicially enforced, written constitution containing a bill of rights. Recently, scholars have noted that Canada’s Charter regime includes elements of both traditional systems and have proposed new ways of understanding the apparent “sharing” of legal authority between courts and legislatures in Canada. These “new models” incorporate several key features of the traditional models but purport to be distinctive, and more accurate, accounts of how legal authority is allocated. Key features of the new models include a bill of rights, judicial review of legislation, and the preservation of legislative finality over the bill of rights through an “override” mechanism. However, these new models fail to capture the division of lawmaking power that is formally entrenched in section 33 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. In addition, they do not provide an adequate account of how the legislative finality provided through the “override” mechanism distinguishes the new models from legislative supremacy. A proposed “hybrid” model accommodates the formal division of legal power in the Charter and raises new questions about the extent of legislative finality in Canadian constitutionalism. The hybrid model also explains Canada’s supposed lapse into de facto judicial supremacy as an indication of a nuanced and compartmentalized form of legislative supremacy. / Thesis / Master of Arts (MA) / Democratic governance was traditionally thought to require a choice between parliamentary sovereignty, with no restrictions on legislative power, and judicial supremacy, with restrictions on legislative power in the form of a judicially enforced, written constitution containing a bill of rights. Recently, scholars noting that Canada’s legal system includes elements of both traditional systems have proposed new ways of understanding the “sharing” of legal authority between courts and legislatures. These “new models” incorporate a bill of rights but allow legislatures to ignore or override these rights, thus preserving an element of parliamentary sovereignty. However, these new models fail to capture the division of lawmaking power that is formally entrenched in section 33 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. A new “hybrid” model accurately reflects this formal division of legal power and raises new challenges to the other new models of constitutionalism.

The obstacles that hinder democracy in Latin America are the topics of interest of this research. Loopholes within Latin American democratic systems of governance are a cause for concern, but also intrigue. In this research the specific loopholes and strengths of democracies in Latin America will be spotted and explained. More specifically, this research features a series quantitative method to help explain and evaluate the characteristics of strong democracies in Latin America as well as the characteristics of weak democracies in Latin America. A series of regression models show a causal relationship between rule of law and the overall democratic success of Latin American countries within the region. Therefore, it can be said that countries that hold robust judiciary systems are not more likely to reach and continue democratic success.

A global proliferation of large dam construction since the 1950s has been accompanied by scientific research challenging the benefit of these projects while drawing attention to their numerous negative environmental and social impacts. The institutions that assess the costs and benefits associated with large dam proposals, creating policies either approving, altering, or disapproving them, collectively form what is known as a policymaking framework. Examining these frameworks allows observers to trace policies through outlined decision-making processes and can help to reveal inherent biases within those systems that may impact policy outcomes. Often, divergent policy outcomes, like the those observed in the cases of the Belo Monte dam in Brazil and HidroAysén dam in Chile, are a result of variations in the environmental policymaking frameworks of the deviating cases. The subjects of this study present similar arrangements of costs and benefits but resulted incongruous policy outcomes, specifically that the HidroAysén dam was not built while the Belo Monte dam is currently under construction. Existing bodies of literature outlining the environmental policymaking frameworks of Chile and Brazil fail to fully address the influence of external variables, including presidential influence, corruption, and electoral politics, on these cases. This project synthesizes an outline of the environmental policymaking frameworks of Chile and Brazil from existing literature and uses the divergent cases of the Belo Monte and HidroAysén dams to provide evidence for the incorporation of these external variables to better understand the incongruous policy outcomes these frameworks produce.

Made available in DSpace on 2017-06-01T18:18:30Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 ronaldo_jose_sousa_paulino_filho.pdf: 568879 bytes, checksum: 3c1f03437c8342a4164b2eff455e17c3 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2014-06-13 / This research''s goal is to study the relationship between the legislator and the interpreter, relating this conflict of roles in these institutions to the figure of minority groups, using the decision of ADPF 132/ADI 4277 as an example of this confrontation. This is a recent phenomenon in brazilian reality, accompanied by a strong growth performance of the activist judiciary, and its widely discussed role. This attitude reaches consequences of different levels, and encompasses a variety of precepts from the structure of powers, institutional harmony, functional performance and social impact. Guided by an increasingly complex and pluralistic society, minority figures appear as vulnerable. The phenomenon of a disharmonious relationship between the institutions that hold power, more explicitly between the Legislature and the Judiciary, is based on this social and political context today. The method and the substance of the conflict resolution consist in a kind of analogy related to confrontation and interference to the prerogatives attributed mainly to parliamentarians and conflict resolution by the judiciary, highlighting the effective decision related to the merits, but illegitimate for this institution. In other words, questioning the need - over judicialization. This is a fundamental debate and has its great importance for the development of the democratic state with rule of law; the social reality and its relation to democracy. It leads to the understanding that this is a phenomenon that if not established with the required care and attention, may cause severe side effects and severe risks to the respect of the democratic ideal. This situation reveals the vulnerability and instability of society, especially the minorities in relation to the controversy of the judicial activism. A bibliographic research is used, qualitative with deductive method, seeking to understand the causes and consequences of the relation of minority groups, exemplified by the decision of the Supreme Court in ADPF132/ADI 4277, linked to the conflict between the legislator and the interpreter. / Este trabalho tem por estudo a relação entre o Legislador e o Intérprete, relacionando esse conflito de papéis nas instituições com a figura de grupos minoritários, utilizando-se da decisão da ADPF 132/ADI 4277 como exemplo desse enfrentamento. Dessa forma um fenômeno recente da realidade brasileira, acompanhado de um forte crescimento é o desempenho ativista do Poder Judiciário, o protagonismo exercido por este é amplamente discutido e polemizado. Essa postura alcança desdobramentos dos mais diversos níveis, e engloba variados preceitos desde a estrutura dos poderes; harmonia institucional; desempenho funcional e repercussão social. Pautada por uma sociedade cada vez mais complexa e plural a figura das minorias aparece como vulnerável. Nesse contexto social e político atualmente se baseia o fenômeno de uma relação desarmônica entre as instituições detentoras do poder, mais explicitamente entre o Poder Legislativo e o Poder Judiciário. O método e o mérito da resolução de conflitos consiste em uma espécie de analogia com relação ao enfrentamento e interferências nas prerrogativas essencialmente atribuídas aos parlamentares e a resolução de conflitos por parte do judiciário, realçando a eficaz decisão em relação ao mérito da questão, mas em conflito com a ilegitimidade do órgão que a exerceu. Ou seja, com o questionamento da necessidade- excesso de judicialização. Trata-se de um debate fundamental e de grandiosa importância para o desenrolar do Estado Democrático de Direito; a realidade social e a sua relação com a democracia. Leva- se ao entendimento que a postura é um fenômeno posto e se não estabelecido com o cuidado e merecedora atenção, pode ocasionar efeitos colaterais e riscos severos de entrave ao respeito do ideal democrático. Situação que revela a vulnerabilidade e instabilidade da sociedade e principalmente das minorias em relação aos poderes e a problemática e polêmica do ativismo judicial. Utiliza-se uma pesquisa bibliográfica, qualitativa com método dedutivo, para buscar compreender as causas e consequências da relação de grupos minoritários, exemplificados pela decisão do STF na ADPF132/ADI 4277, com a ligação do conflito entre o Legislador e o Intérprete.

The ECJ as a Political Actor In both the US and in the EU, the judiciary is often accused of being political. This thesis does not attempt to compare and contrast the two grand judiciaries; they are too dissimilar to be compared in this context. It only deals with the judiciary of the EU, trying to analyse its presumably 'political' character: why is it that political and legal scholars label the Court as 'political' or 'activist'? This thesis seeks to investigate the validity of these accusations by proposing a synthesis of various political theories and a certain clarification of the terminology in the context of the European judiciary. Chapter 1 deals with the ECJ as an institution, discussing its functioning and its presumably constitutional character. Chapter 2 then focuses on the notions of 'politics' and 'political', firstly in terms of their definitions by various authors and consequently in terms of the various political theories of European integration. Chapter 3 then deals with the central question of the thesis: is the ECJ a political actor or not? The analysis in the third chapter is split into five dimensions: (1) the judges' motivations in adjudication, (2) the appointment of judges, (3) the subject-matter of the Court's adjudication, (4) the institutional balance within the Union,...