1 THE LAW AND PRACTICE OF JUDICIAL REVIEW BY JUSTICE ...

Judicial review, in this sense, is currently exercised in the Gambia by the High Court,
pursuant to section 3 of the Courts Act 1964 (Cap. 6:01). As is well-known, section
3(1) of the Courts Act, 1964 provides that:
“The Supreme Court shall have the jurisdiction and powers provided
by the Constitution and all the jurisdiction, powers and authorities
which were vested in or capable of being exercised by Her Majesty’s
High Court of Justice in England immediately before the eighteenth
day of February, 1965.”
(The reference in 1964 to the Supreme Court is to be understood as a reference to the
present day High Court.) These powers and jurisdiction of the High Court in
England, of course, include the power of judicial review. These powers of the High
Court are confirmed in Article 133 of the 1997 Constitution which provides as
follows:
“The High Court shall have supervisory jurisdiction over all lower
courts and adjudicatory authorities in the Gambia, and, in the exercise
of the supervisory jurisdiction, shall have power to issue directions,
orders or writs, including writs of habeas corpus, orders of certiorari,
mandamus and prohibition as it may consider appropriate for the
purposes of enforcing its supervisory powers.”
Secondly, judicial review may refer to the courts’ enforcement of the doctrine of
supremacy of the constitution to invalidate legislation or any other acts in conflict
with the Constitution. This is the sense in which the expression tends to be
understood in the United States because of the assertion by the US Supreme Court,
ever since Marbury v Madison 2 , of its jurisdiction to review the constitutionality of
Acts of Congress. The Gambian courts have the power to exercise judicial review in
both the connotations outlined above.
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