平等规范的审查标准与立法者的裁量余地——以德美两国为例

无论在大陆法系的德国,还是英美法系的美国,平等规范都是司法审查最为借重的依据之一。但是,由于平等规范与其它宪法规范相比更为抽象和空洞,它的具体适用问题也更显复杂。实践中,德美两国各自发展出了完全不同的审查标准去适应“平等”判断的要求。由于立法者的裁量余地是其所共同面对的问题,它构成了贯穿平等规范审查标准理论发展的一条线索,是从理论上澄清平等原则审查标准之原委所不可逾越的部分。因此,有必要从立法者的裁量余地入手,对德美两国的不同审查标准进行比较分析,借助“原则”理论,从立法者裁量余地变化的原因的角度,对审查标准背后的运作机理进行解读。

Review Standards for Equitable Norms and Discretion of the Legislators——The German and American Cases

Whether the German in the civil law tradition or the USA in the common law tradition,equitable standards are one of the measures for judicial review.Nonetheless,due to the fact that the equitable standards are more abstract and empty compared with other constitutional norms,their actual applications are more complicated.In practice,there developed in German and the USA diametrically different review standards to be applied to “equitable” judgments.As the discretion of the legislators is the common issue facing them,it has become a thread in the development of theories of equitable norm review standards,the part that cannot be bypassed in the theoretical clarification of the merits of equitable doctrine review standards.Therefore,it is necessary to start from the discretion of the legislators to compare and analyze the different German and American review standards and ,by using the “doctrine”theories,to interpret the mechanism behind the review standards from the perspective of the causes for the discretionary variance of the legislators.