Judicial Review in an Objective Legal System

This book grounds judicial review in its deepest foundations: the function, authority, and objectivity of a legal system as a whole.

The debate over judicial review typically frames law's meaning as either rigid or elastic, strictly given or subjectively interpreted. By examining the operation of the wider legal system, this book provides a new framework for understanding objective judicial review.How should courts interpret the law? While all agree that courts must be objective, people differ sharply over what this demands in practice: fidelity to the text? To the will of the people? To certain moral ideals? In Judicial Review in an Objective Legal System, Tara Smith breaks through the false dichotomies inherent in dominant theories - various forms of originalism, living constitutionalism, and minimalism - to present a new approach to judicial review. She contends that we cannot assess judicial review in isolation from the larger enterprise of which it is a part. By providing careful clarification of both the function of the legal system as well as of objectivity itself, she produces a compelling, firmly grounded account of genuinely objective judicial review. Smith's innovative approach marks a welcome advance for anyone interested in legal objectivity and individual rights.