Judicial federalism from a comparative perspective : Spain, the United States and the United Kingdom

Abstract

This thesis aims to highlight the importance of the organisation and functioning of the judicial power in complex or composite polities and its relevance as a determinative element of the complex or composite nature of the polity itself. For this, it carries out a comparative analysis of the organisation and functioning of the judicial power in three models which - whilst all sharing the duality in the executive and legislative powers - present very a very different structure: Spain, the United States and the United Kingdom. This comparison requires the construction of a theoretical framework for the analysis of judicial federalism, which in current literature has still not been fully developed. On the basis of the existing theoretical instruments for the analysis of political federalism, a concept of "judicial federalism" is constructed, characterised by two main features: the geographical distribution of judicial power, and the granting of a sphere of judicial autonomy (understood as a combination of institutional autonomy, jurisdictional autonomy and governmental autonomy) to both the federation and the component units. An initial overview of these issues highlights the minimum or common element in all models of judicial federalism is the existence of a "supreme court" at both levels. The main part of the study focuses, then, on the higher courts of the component units and their relations with the higher jurisdictional body of the federation. In addition, a final chapter is included which compares the interrelation between constitutional review and judicial federalism in the selected models.