Courts in Federal Countries examines the role high courts play in thirteen countries, including Australia, Brazil, Canada, Germany, India, Nigeria, Spain, and the United States.

"Courts are key players in the dynamics of federal countries since their rulings have a direct impact on the ability of governments to centralize and decentralize power. Courts in Federal Countries examines the role high courts play in thirteen countries, including Australia, Brazil, Canada, Germany, India, Nigeria, Spain, and the United States. The volume's contributors analyse the centralizing or decentralizing forces at play following a court's ruling on issues such as individual rights, economic affairs, social issues, and other matters. The thirteen substantive chapters have been written to facilitate comparability between the countries. Each chapter outlines a country's federal system, explains the constitutional and institutional status of the court system, and discusses the high court's jurisprudence in light of these features. Courts in Federal Countries offers insightful explanations of judicial behaviour in the world's leading federations."--

Comparative studies examine the constitutional design and actual operation of governments in Argentina, Australia, Austria, Canada, Germany, India, Nigeria, Russia, South Africa, Switzerland, and the United States. Contributors analyze the structures and workings of legislative, executive, and judicial institutions in each sphere of government. They also explore how the federal nature of the polity affects those institutions and how the institutions in turn affect federalism. The book concludes with reflections on possible future trends.

This booklet is designed to introduce judges and judicial administrators in other countries to the U.S. federal judicial system, its organization and administration, and its relationship to the legislative and executive branches of the government. The Judicial Services Office of the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts developed this booklet to support the work of the Judicial Conference Committee on International Judicial Relations. The Chief Justice presides over the Judicial Conference of the United States, the national policymaking body of the federal courts. Congress passed legislation establishing the earliest form of the Judicial Conference in 1922. Today, 26 judges comprise the Conference�the chief judge of each of the 13 federal courts of appeals, 12 district (trial) judges elected from each of the geographic circuits, and the chief judge of the U.S. Court of International Trade.

This volume examines the design and impact of courts in African federal systems from a comparative perspective. Recent developments indicate that the previously stymied idea of federalism is now being revived in the constitutional arrangements of several African countries. A number of them jumped on the bandwagon of federalism in the early 1990s because it came to be seen as a means to facilitate development, to counter the concentration of power in a single governmental actor and to manage communal tensions. An important part of the move towards federalism is the establishment of courts that are empowered to umpire intergovernmental disputes. This edited volume brings together contributions that first discuss questions of design by focusing, in particular, on the organization of the judiciary and the appointment of judges in African federal systems. They then examine whether courts have had a rather centralizing or decentralizing impact on the operation of African federal systems. The book will be of interest to researchers and policy-makers in the areas of comparative constitutional law and comparative politics.

Courts and Federalism examines recent developments in the judicial review of federalism in the United States, Australia, and Canada. Gerald Baier argues that the judicial review of Canadian federalism is under-investigated by political scientists. New institutionalist literature in political science suggests that courts matter as sites of governmental conflict and that they rely on processes of reasoning and decision making that can be distinguished from the political. Baier proposes that the idea of judicial doctrine is necessary to a better understanding of judicial reasoning, especially about federalism. To bolster this assertion, he presents detailed surveys of recent judicial doctrine in the US, Australia, and Canada. The evidence demonstrates two things: first, that specific, traceable doctrines are commonly used to settle division-of-power disputes, and second, that the use of doctrine in judicial reasoning makes a positive contribution to the operation of a federal system.