6 Concept of Judicial Review

1. Definition: the courts' power to test legislative and executive acts against the Constitution and void the inconsistent — constitutional supremacy's enforcement (Article 1) and the judiciary's check within the separation of powers;2. The classical pedigree:Marbury v. Madison (1803 — Marshall's "it is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is" by name only); the diffuse-vs-concentrated models (American-any-court vs. European-constitutional-court — Nepal's diffuse-with-a-focal-bench hybrid: any court applies the Constitution, but voidness declarations belong to the Constitutional Bench through the SC's Article-133(1) machinery);3. The Nepali design's features: (i) the open locus — any citizen may sue (133(1) — the world's most generous standing for abstract review); (ii) the prospective-retrospectivechoice — void ab initio or from the decision date (the reliance-protection technique); (iii) the review objects: statutes (federal/provincial/local) and the constitutional-amendment question's shadow (the basic-structure doctrine — Unit 7); (iv) the binding precedent (128(3)) — the SC as the system's single interpreter;4. The practice's landmarks (the exam's survey, by name-and-outcome only): the expansionist era of the 1990 constitution (PIL's rise); the conflict-era rights cases; the 2015- era's structural cases — the 2020–21 dissolution rulings (the HoR's reinstatement — judicialreview's most visible intervention in the parliamentary executive); the federalism disputes' first generation (the trade-and-excise cases; the civil-servant-transfer cases — the federation- province competence lines being drawn);5.…