ABSTRACT
The countries of continental Europe are all influenced by the legal tradition of ancient Rome, where code law prevailed. Great Britain deviates from this pattern in having a tradition of common law, where judges continually reinterpret old precedents in the light of new circumstances. Code law, by contrast, is characterized by complex bodies of categories and subcategories that give the courts limited discretion in handling particular cases. In the USA, judicial review is of a concrete nature in the sense that a real case or controversy is a precondition for judicial review to take place. In addition, Europe embraces the concept of abstract judicial review, which means that a legislative text is reviewed by the constitutional court before the text becomes law. Abstract review is initiated by politicians, who refer legislation directly to the court. This chapter focuses on five countries that handle judicial review in very different ways: Great Britain, Switzerland, Germany, France, and Poland.
