THE DOCTRINE OF JUDICIAL REVIEW AND THE OBLIGATION TO OBEY THE LAW

This thesis examined the problem of obligation to obey the law in the light of the practice, exercise and essence of the doctrine of judicial review. The methodology it employed was critical and conceptual analyses of primary literatures such as Congress V Supreme Court, The Supreme Court and Judicial Review, The Supreme Court and Supreme Law, The Judicial Veto, and secondary literatures such as Legal Obligation, The Nature of Law and other academic journals on the subject matter.
The thesis found that the controversy over our obligation to obey the law consists in whether the obligation is a moral or a peculiarly legal one. This thesis argued that our obligation to obey the law is a moral one considering the essence and practice of judicial review. When judges review a particular legislative law on the basis of a written constitution, what they are found to entrench is not only the provision of constitutional reasons for legislative failure of justice, but also, the moral criteria for the validity, authenticity and obligatoriness of laws