The Volokh Conspiracy: Courts in Federal Countries: Federalists or Unitarists?

Courts in federal countries: the US case

The US Supreme Court has, overall, constrained the states more than the federal government, thereby limiting local autonomy. But it has also promoted an important form of decentralization by protecting individual rights against both federal and state power.

By Ilya Somin • Read more »

Centralizing and decentralizing trends on federal high courts

In our edited volume, Courts in Federal Countries: Federalists or Unitarists? (2017), we find the high courts of Australia, Brazil, Mexico, Nigeria, and the United States to be generally centralist. The courts of Canada, India, South Africa, and Spain are mostly though not consistently centralist, while the Belgian and German high courts are rather consistently balanced between unitarism and federalism. Ethiopia and Switzereland are unique cases.

By Nicholas Aroney and John Kincaid • Read more »

Courts in Federal Countries: Federalists or Unitarists?

Many factors shape the jurisprudence of high courts in federal countries, including, among others, history, political parties, degree of constitutional non-centralization, ethnically or linguistically distinct constituent units, whether the federation is integrative or devolutionary, and whether it is based on multiple demoi or a single demos.

By Nicholas Aroney and John Kincaid • Read more »

Nicholas Aroney and John Kincaid guest-blogging on “Courts in Federal Countries: Federalists or Unitarists”

Australian legal scholar Nicholas Aroney and political scientist John Kincaid will be guest-blogging this week on their new edited volume, which assesses the role of judicial review in federal systems around the world.

By Ilya Somin • Read more »