The Birth of Judicial Politics in France: The Constitutional Council in Comparative Perspective

The French Constitutional Council, a quasi-judicial body created at the dawn of the Fifth Republic, functioned in relative obscurity for almost two decades before emerging in the 1980s as a pivotal actor in the French policymaking process. Alec Stone focuses on how this once docile institution, through its practice of constitutional review, has become an important autonomous actor in the French political system. After examining the formal prohibition against judicial review in France, Stone illustrates how politicians and the Council have collaborated, often unintentionally and in the service of contradictory agendas, to enhance the Council's power significantly in the last decade. While the Council came to function as a third house of Parliament, the legislative work of the government and Parliament was "juridicized". Through a discussion of broad theoretical issues, Stone then expands the scope of his analysis to the politics of constitutional review in Germany, Spain, and Austria.