Do judges in any country have limitations on how they interpret laws and constitutions?

Question

I've seen this in many countries. Judges and Supreme Court Justices giving interpretations of what the text of laws meant which has nothing to do with the original text meaning. A law or article of a constitution could say "this is white" and a judge or SCJ comes and says "here it says white, but they meant black".

I know there are procedures to remove judges or SCJ, but they are extremely complicated if you don't have a large majority.

Do judges in any country have any limitations on how they interpret laws and constitutions, other than the threat of being removed with a large majority?

Answer 1

The answer from Greendrake is correct as far as it goes.

But there are some other factors.

• Decisions of lower court judges can be appealed to higher courts, and sometimes can also be collaterally attacked in separate lawsuits or motions (such as a petition for a writ of habeas corpus in the U.S.). Of course, at some point, the buck stops, and there are no higher courts to which an appeal can be brought.

• In the U.K. the concept of parliamentary supremacy means that, historically, and for most practical purposes even today, parliament can overturn the prec​eden​tial effect of any court decision by statute. In contrast, this is not possible in the U.S. with respect to issues of constitutional law. Treaties also sometimes have elevated status that prevent them from being changed to address a judicial interpretation with ordinary legislation (although this is not the case in U.S. law). Even in countries where ordinary legislation cannot overrule the effect of a precedent regarding a constitution or treaty, the constitution or treaty can usually be amended by an appropriate process.

• In many countries, ordinary courts do not have jurisdiction to reach a conclusion of a law that a duly enacted statute or regulation is unconstitutional. A claim that a statute or regulation is unconstitutional must be raised in a separate tribunal, often called a "Constitutional Court" or "Constitutional Council", in satellite litigation, and only that tribunal can hold that a statute or regulation is unconstitutional. In contrast, in the U.S., any judge, even a limited jurisdiction court judge presiding over traffic offenses, has the right and obligation to declare laws that appear to be unconstitutional invalid on that ground.

• Courts in common law countries are supposed to follow binding precedents of courts to which their decisions can be appealed (unless superseded by legislation or implicitly overruled by later higher court decisions) under the doctrine of stare decisis.

• In most countries, the judicial branch is a separate branch of the civil service, and higher court judges are generally promoted from the ranks of the next lower court's judges. Judges who make poor decisions aren't promoted and in an extreme case, can be fired.

• The executive branch, often through a chief executive officer in the government or a board of pardons and paroles, can often grant mercy relative to a court ruling in a criminal case imposing a conviction and sentence upon a person.

• Sometimes, especially in cases where court orders are directed a legislative bodies, the people to whom the court order is directed can simply ignore the court ruling, in circumstances where the court can do very little about this defiance. In U.S. law, this most often happens when a state court orders a state legislature to appropriate more funds for K-12 education pursuant to a state constitutional provision that mandates a certain minimal K-12 education funding.

• It is worth recalling that legislatures screw up from time to time and that often courts make a ruling such as saying the "white" means "black" because an alternative reading of the statute would be absurd and it is clear that the legislature merely wrote plain language legislation contrary to its actual intent.

• One example of countries without judicial independence where court decisions can be adjusted by outside forces is in one party communist states, such as China, where the communist party has the de facto power to cause judges to change their opinions to reflect party policy, although more often to make a ruling conform less to a fair reading of the law than to make it confirm more precisely to a fair reading of the law. Even in countries that nominally have judicial independence, like the U.S., but where political influence on the judiciary is great, absurd readings of the law are often motivated by the partisan political party biases of the judges.

Answer 2

Do judges in any country have any limitations on how they interpret laws and constitutions, other than the threat of being removed with a large majority?

Not in the countries with genuine judicial independence. If a judge says "here it says white, but they meant black" you don't have any recourse other than to appeal to the higher court (if there is one).

Where the judiciary is not independent though, the limitations are abundant.