Judicial case law at the frontier between law and politics

Remedial Creativity in Common Law Courts

Séminaire organisé dans le cadre du Louvain Global College of Law par le Professeur Eoin Carolan (University College Dublin). Lors du séminaire, on s’intéressera à des décisions récentes de juridictions de common law, qui, notamment à partir des textes garantissant la protection des droits fondamentaux, approfondissent le dialogue avec les pouvoirs politiques en suggérant de manière créative des pistes de solution. A partir de cette jurisprudence originale, il s’agit d’entamer une réflexion sur les weak forms of judicial review, la séparation des pouvoirs et la protection effective des droits fondamentaux.

Participation gratuite mais inscription obligatoire par email.

Résumé du thème

The primary argument of this paper is that remedial creativity amongst common law courts departs from this model in a manner that has potentially adverse implications for this constitutional architecture. The second argument is that the problems identified with remedial creativity reflect wider problems with dialogical accounts of inter-branch relations.

The paper provides a general overview of remedial creativity across leading common law jurisdictions but concentrates on two recent decisions: the New Zealand Court of Appeal and Supreme Court’s development of a ‘declaration of inconsistency’ power in AG v Taylor (2017/2018) and the Irish Supreme Court’s deployment of an adapted suspended declaration of invalidity in NVH v Minister for Justice(2017).

In both cases, the courts developed a ‘new’ remedy for which domestic law makes no specific provision. The court in each instance performs a quasi-advisory function rather than the traditional adjudicative one. While remedial creativity of this type may have benefits, these innovations blur formal and institutional boundaries that are critical to a system of separation of powers and to the rule of law. Developing new remedies that offer ‘advice’ to the other branches might be seen as an expansion of the judicial power into the political frontier. Yet, there is a danger that uncertainty over the status of this ‘advice’ and over how the other branches should respond to it may weaken both the distinctiveness and authority of the courts’ pronouncements.

The paper concludes therefore that remedial creativity at the frontier between law and politics poses a long-term risk to courts where the remedies developed move away from the distinctive characteristics that make judicial pronouncements an authoritative determination of law.