In the United States, the Supreme Court holds immense power as the highest court. It has the ability to strike down any law (passed by congress) or executive order (issued by the president) as unconstitutional.
Additionally, the Court possesses the ability to interpret laws according to its own judgment, overturn its previous rulings, and lower court decisions, thus setting new precedents.
I know that most countries in Europe use Civil Law systems. So my question is how powerful is the highest court in your country?
Edit: All of the powers of the United States Supreme Court can only be exercised if a specific case comes up. The vast majority of the cases the court hears originate in lower courts. But, there are a select few types of cases that the Supreme Court has original jurisdiction in (such as disputes between states).
The court chooses which cases to accept. They hear appeals from lower courts concerning every section of the law ranging from criminal to trademark cases.
Each year, they get about 8,000 requests from petitioners seeking to appeal their case to the court. They only accept around 50-80 cases per year.
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The Supreme Court of the United Kingdom has been in existence for almost fourteen years. It does not have the power to overturn primary legislation but it can overturn secondary legislation. It’s the final court of appeal for all civil cases in the UK and for criminal cases from England, Wales and Northern Ireland. It also determines “devolution issues” where there is a dispute about exactly which powers the governments and legislatures of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have.
Austria doesn’t actually have one highest court, instead there are three separate highest courts with different responsibilities.
The “Supreme Court of Justice” serves as the final court of appeal for regular civil and criminal cases.
The “Supreme Administrative Court” serves as the final court of appeal for cases involving complaints againt government agencies.
The “Constitutional Court” serves to verify wether laws and statutes are in line with the Austrian Constitution, and also to solve disputes between government layers, disputes between the government and courts, and disputes between separate courts.
Legally speaking, all three of these courts are on the same level and none can overturn decisions of any of the other two. However the Constitutional Court can always rule that a dispute is within their jurisdiction, thus giving it slightly more power.
If the Constitutional Court finds that a law is not in accordance with the constitution, that law is not immediately struck down. Instead the court sends its opinion to the legislature, which then has the job to “repair” the law within a certain timeframe. If the deadline arrives and the law has not been repaired, the court can declare the problematic section of the law to be invalid – it cannot write a new law itself, just strike out words from the existing one. Usually the deadline is set as either 6 or 12 months, though in some cases the court can set a shorter one, even up to immediately – though that is reserved for rare cases. Also of note is that the court usually only changes the law for future cases – i.e. if you broke a law that was later found to be unconstitutional, you don’t automatically get acquitted. However the court also has the right to apply its decisions retroactively, though again this doesn’t happen all that often.
More powerful I’m afraid, the Dutch High Council takes the liberty to ‘interpret’ laws beyond or even contrary to their intention. And the Europeans courts do the same but are even worse in the liberties on the separation of powers they take. There’s a huge democratic problem.
Romania technically has two “highest courts”.
One would be The High Court of Cassation and Justice. It is at the very top of the judiciary system. It sets the standard for the accepted interpretations of the law and it also handles any contested decisions from the various courts of appeal.
The other one is the Constitutional Court, which verifies the constitutionality of passed laws. It has the right to veto any new laws, but it cannot summon itself. That can only be done by the Ombudsman (“People’s Advocate” in Romanian aka an institutions which is supposed to handle complaints addressed to the state).
You will find that these attributes tend to be common throughout most of the world’s “highest courts”. The main difference you will find is that some countries have only one court that represents both the judiciary system and the constitution, like the USA, and some countries have one court for the judiciary system and one for the constitution, like Romania.
The highest court is the constitutional court. It is not that powerful, as there is a political position which is the High Representative and he/she is the highest interpreter of the constitution, so his/her word is final.
Apart from that, the court’s decisions are not enforced… It’s like the UN. And many people don’t recognize its legitimacy.
I’m not a lawyer, but I believe it goes something like this: The Supreme court of Norway does have a lot of power, but they don’t use it often. They are the third tier in the system, and only appeals that are principally important or when the interpretation of the law is unclear.
They have a selection commission that accepts or rejects cases appealed to the supreme court.
Their role is also constitutional, but unlike the US, they don’t immediately deem laws to be unconstitutional. (at least not in modern times). Instead, if a law is introduced that goes against the constitution, not much happens until a case comes up, in which case it proceeds normally through district court, court of appeals, and then eventually supreme court.
Edit: Unconstitutional laws are technically legal to make, but won’t hold up in court. So if parliament want to ensure the purpose of the law is fulfilled, they’d have to rework it.
Rulings from the supreme court builds precedent. And just like laws are ranked by importance, so is precedent. So a precedent set by the supreme court is more or less unquestionable, unless that precedent is very old or the law was recently amended.
But in the application of the law in general, the district courts, and courts of appeal also build precedent.
If you’re a lawyer in Norway, please correct me.
Edit 2: retroactive laws are forbidden by the constitution.
Not that powerful but powerful enough if you ask me. It can’t just overrule or terminate laws like in the US, even if down right unconstitutional laws are passed they will come into effect and a case has to reach the Supreme court to set the precedent that the constitution obviously goes above of this law.
It isn’t allowed to interpret the laws however it wants,the Supreme Courts main objective is only to set precedent when the lower courts don’t know exactly how to rule in a case. Roughly 7500 appeals are sent in each year to the Supreme Court and only about 100 of them gets trial permits which means they’ll be tried in the Supreme Court. It can overturn previous rulings, a so called “Resning” but it requires that new circumstances have emerged that may affect the previous ruling.
Trial permits can also be granted in exceptional cases even if the case isnt used to set precedent. Which is the case of “Resning” or maybe a miscarriage of justice or that the outcome of the case in the court of appeal (Hovrätten) is obviously due to gross oversight or gross error.
There is also A Supreme Administrative court that is also used to set precedent for the lower courts in in the legal field they handle which is administrative law obviously. This is the area where Agencies and Authorities live in which won’t be tried in regular court that handles crimes such as theft or murder or whatever. It functions more or less the same as the Supreme Court but just within another legal area.
1. Tingsrätten
2. Hovrätten
3. Högsta domstolen
Tingsrätten is where basically anything can happen, any crime is tried here.
Hovrätten is when someone has managed to appeal against the tingsrätt ruling so they get tried again, this can either make the sentence the same, lighter or even heavier than what tingsrätten ruled. Hovrätten usually handles heavier crime.
Högsta domstolen is where very specific and few cases ever get to. You need prövningstillstånd to be able to even have chance of getting retried here. It can for example be if hovrätten has done a major wrong doing.
I’m not aware of any court system where the court can just decide to issue a ruling on the validity of any new law or regulation. I had understood that courts generally share the same requirement that a real case must be brought before them so they can look at the facts and how it all plays out. I’d be interested to know if there were a European jurisdiction where the court can proactively claim this mandate.
One thing we have in Canada are “reference questions,” where either Parliament or a provincial government can send an abstract/theoretical question to the Supreme Court. However even there it isn’t the court that initiates the process.
The italian equivalent to the USA Supreme Court is the Constitutional Court.
It has 3 main area of action:
controversies on the constitutional legitimacy of laws issued by the State and Regions and when the Court declares a law unconstitutional, the law ceases to have effect the day after the publication of the ruling;
conflicts arising from allocation of powers of the State and those powers allocated to State and Regions, and between Regions;
charges brought against the President of the Republic.
The Supreme Court of the Netherlands is the final court of appeal in civil, criminal and tax cases. It is a court of cassation, meaning that it only looks whether or not the lower courts have applied the law correctly. Due to Article 120 of the Dutch constitution, the court is expressly not allowed to rule on the constitutionality of the laws adopted by parliament. It can overturn secondary legislation however.
The court itself is made up by 36 judges: a president, 6 vice presidents, 25 justices and 4 justices extraordinary. They are divided into four chambers: the civil, criminal, tax and ombudsman chambers. The judges are appointed for life, but must retire by age 70 at the latest.
There are three other high courts, but they are limited to certain specific legal areas like social security law or administrative law.
It is worth noting though that the European Court of Human Rights and the Court of Justice of the European Union have (had) a lot of influence on Dutch law and its application as well. In certain ways the interplay between the Dutch constitution and the European Convention on Human Rights or EU treaties have provided a limited form of constitutional review.
We do not have the equivalant of a supreme court.
We have a council that advices the government on the laws it intends to pass, but it doesn’t have any say in the end, this council also functions as a third court of appeals, although it can only judge if the trial has passed in accordance with the established procedures.
We do not have any court that is able to judge based on the constitutional articles, our courts can only judge based on regular laws and on treaties.
As far as i know Germany has multiple “highest courts”, all with different areas of responsibility.
The one most people will call the highest court however, is the Federal Constitutional Court.
To quote:
“Any person may lodge a constitutional complaint claiming that one of his or her fundamental rights or one of the rights laid down in Art. 20(4), Art. 33, Art. 38, Art. 101, Art. 103 and Art. 104 of the Basic Law (Grundgesetz – GG) has been violated by public authority (Art. 93(1) no. 4a GG).The Federal Constitutional Court may find an act of public authority to be unconstitutional, void a law, or reverse a judicial decision that violates the Constitution and remand the matter to a competent court.The Federal Constitutional Court cannot issue any other decisions on account of a constitutional complaint. It cannot, for instance, award damages or initiate criminal prosecution. In principle, a specific action on the part of the legislature cannot be claimed by means of a constitutional complaint.”
It has a lot of power to stop unconstitutional laws, but no power to directly influence future laws (iirc an acting judge on the constitutional court can’t even talk about the legality of laws that haven’t yet been passed? might be wrong on this one). That’s why our voting laws keep getting changes, because our governements have had a hard time makign a voting law that actually does its job well and is perfectly constitutional for a long time now. And for that reason we have the second biggest parliament in the world after China.
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Other courts that are considered “highest court” in their specific area of expertise:
The Federal Court / Federal Court of Justice is the highest court forordinary justice, including both civil and criminal cases.
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The Federal Administrative Court deals with (appeals of?) Administrative Lawsuits. Most of these are citizens versus the State itself.
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The Federal Fiscal Court is an appeal court for Tax and Customs Matters that have already been heard by the lower Fiscal Courts.
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The Federal Labour Court is the last instance for labour related lawsuits, be they individual such as employees suing their employer, or collective such as cases about strikes.
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The Federal Social Court is the federal court of appeals for social security cases.
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If a case necessitates it, the Federal Courts can hold a case together in the “Joint Senate of the Supreme Courts of the Federation”, but as this (afaik) doesn’t permanently exist and is formed on a case by case basis, it isn’t an actual court in itself.
Edit: There are also a few courts on the Federal level that aren’t considered the highest court as they are subordinate to one of the highest courts on this list. These are the Patent Court and the Troops Service Courts North and South which are Disciplinary Courts of the Bundeswehr.
OP, do you think that the fact that the Supreme Court is so powerful also has to do with the fact that judges are appointed for life, because that is quite unusual? In most European systems judges are either appointed for a fixed period or until a fixed retirement age.
Most of the world uses either “common law” or “civil law” systems, this highly influences how much power the courts have. The US and other descendants of the british law system use common law, which relies heavily on precedent, and grants courts a wide range of legislative power through that. In civil law precedent is secondary, and legislative powers has to be granted specifically in the first place, like how Germany has its constitutional court that can strike down laws for being unconstitutional.
Since these systems differ wildly the common law courts will seem immensely more powerful.
Addressing my own country the supreme court is the final court of appeals for any case. It however does not hold sway over the royal family, which are only beholden to the queens judgement, so far there hasn’t really been any need for her to do anything but a proper dressing down for a speeding violation. Nor does it gold sway over MPs unless folketinget (parliament) votes to waive immunity (it has always done so if someone was accused of anything), it also supplies half the judges for an impeachment should that occur, those are rare though. If you are found guilty by the supreme court there’s no more legal options to pursue. You can however seek a pardon from her majesty, it will be reviewed by legal experts in the ministry of justice and if they and the minister approves it will be put before the Queen.