Conceptual Precision and Parliamentary Systems of Rights: Disambiguating “Dialogue”
The concept of "dialogue" has become an increasingly popular way to understand how judicial review operates in parliamentary systems of government with bills of rights. Dialogue is said to provide a middle ground between judicial supremacy and traditional parliamentary sovereignty by giving both courts and the elected branches of government a say in the resolution of policies that come into conflict with protected rights. This understanding of dialogue originates in Canada, and is often applied to the United Kingdom, New Zealand, and Australia. Scholars invoking the concept have explored how particular structural elements in the bills of rights adopted in these countries serve as mechanisms for dialogue, but they often employ the term in man different, sometimes contradictory, ways. This article develops four typologies of dialogue, and assesses the concept's utility for empirical assessment of how parliamentary systems of rights protection operate. It finds that a lack of conceptual precision by scholars employing the term impairs its utility for both empirical and comparative analysis of parliamentary rights review.