Parliamentary Supremacy Vs Judicial Supremacy In India

Both parliament and the judiciary should not exceed their limits as defined by the constitution of India so that harmony can be maintained between the legislature and judiciary. The new socio-economic trends are to be kept in mind before making the legal provisions and their interpretation both in strict and liberal sense. Participatory democratic system must be made effective and there must be proper check on the active interaction between the people and their representatives is responsible for the conflict between the parliament and judicial system in India. Judiciary and the legislature must be strengthened in terms of its special power of judicial review to check and contain the excesses of other two wings of the government.The concept of Judicial Review should not be impaired nor should the Fundamental Rights be reduced in their importance. A provision may be introduced in the Constitution on the lines of the American Constitution, giving supremacy to the Constitution and the laws made there under as is the case with the American Constitution.

The result of The Joint Colloquium on "Parliamentary Supremacy and Judicial Independence ... towards a Commonwealth Model". It brought together parliamentarians, judges, practitioners and academics in order to draft guidelines for best practice relations between Executive, Parliament and Judiciary.

First published in 1999. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

The Human Rights Act (HRA) of the UK, 1998, unlike systems of parliamentary sovereignty and judicial supremacy, promised a new, 'balanced' model for the protection of rights, which conferred courts with limited power of review over legislation. This book examines the promise of the new model against its performance in practice by comparing judicial review under the HRA to an exemplar of the old model of judicial review, the Indian Constitution.

Stephen Gardbaum proposes and examines a new way of protecting rights in a democracy.

Few will deny that the post-emergency higher judiciary in India has earned widespread public acclaim for its innovative and creative jurisprudence notwithstanding the argument advanced by some critics that it has exercised excessive jurisdiction, transgressing at times the executive and legislative domains, contrary to the original 'checks and balances' design of the Constitution. While the issue of judicial restraint in the context of constitutional separation of powers deserves serious attention, the fact of the matter is that juristocracy invariably triumphs when the elected representatives in a democracy cannot be trusted to provide good and lawful governance. From this perspective, the unprecedented judicialisation of politics and the growth of judicial activism in India seems to be an organic response to pressures within the political system itself. The contributors to the volume are well-known scholars, lawyers, and academics. They reflect on the itinerary of higher judiciary and its contributions to constitutional law and public good contextualised for the developmental path of the political system since the commencement of the Republic in 1950. The papers cover a variety of topics -- judicial activism, judiciary and ecology, secularism, parliamentary institutions, central executive, new economy, and judicial reforms -- that focus primarily, though not exclusively, on the ramifications of judicial activism for Indian politics.

This book has four main themes: (1) a criticism of 'common law constitutionalism', the theory that Parliament's authority is conferred by, and therefore is or can be made subordinate to, judge-made common law; (2) an analysis of Parliament's ability to abdicate, limit or regulate the exercise of its own authority, including a revision of Dicey's conception of sovereignty, a repudiation of the doctrine of implied repeal and the proposal of a novel theory of 'manner and form' requirements for law-making; (3) an examination of the relationship between parliamentary sovereignty and statutory interpretation, defending the reality of legislative intentions, and their indispensability to sensible interpretation and respect for parliamentary sovereignty; and (4) an assessment of the compatibility of parliamentary sovereignty with recent constitutional developments, including the expansion of judicial review of administrative action, the Human Rights and European Communities Acts and the growing recognition of 'constitutional principles' and 'constitutional statutes'.