Horizontal Enforcement of Fundamental Rights in Bangladesh: Extending the Scope of Judicial Review

Judicial review, in general, is the power exercised by Judiciary of a state to assess whether any activity of the legislative, executive, and administrative organs of government are in accordance with the constitution or not. Article 102 of the Constitution of Bangladesh has empowered its’ Supreme Court to exercise this power by offering writ jurisdiction, which basically is applied to ensure fundamental rights of any aggrieved person. If the historical tradition of judicial review in Asia is thoroughly observed, it would be found that the vertical enforcement of fundamental rights was exclusively present in many counties where the judicial review can be exercised only against the state arms. But recently horizontal enforcement of fundamental rights is emerging noticeably, through constitutional transplantation, in Asia as well in Bangladesh, which extends the writ jurisdiction against the private individual as well. In some recent cases, the conservative vertical approach of the Courts of Bangladesh is altering or can be said attempting to alter for ensuring fundamental rights at large, albeit not by directly enforcing horizontally against any private individual but at least finding a connotation between the state and the private stakeholder through ‘Datafin test’. This paper has explored the scope and prospect of the horizontal enforcement of fundamental rights in Bangladesh under the constitutional obligation and tries to make a thin line of demarcation to what extent, this enforcement would be of horizontal as well as vertical effect.