The Least Resilient Branch
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 30 June 2022
Populists in power behave as if courts were the most dangerous branch, and therefore usually make them the first target of populist assault. This dynamic is particularly pronounced in the case of constitutional courts, as the examples of Hungary and Poland show. In both those cases, constitutional courts were captured, and judicial review of constitutionality has been effectively rendered otiose. Beyond constitutional courts, common courts are also often subordinated to the executive, or see their powers marginalized. Judicial responses range from judicial resistance, to laying low, to "judicial populism" under which judges became active enablers of the executive will. All these strategies can be observed not only in Hungary and Poland, but also in India, Brazil and the Philippines.
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.