By the 1980s, to approach judicial review in the context of comparative law meant to ignore the constitutional practice developed in a number of members within the common-law family of nations. This happened because the United Kingdom, along with some of her former colonies (such as Canada, New Zealand and Australia, besides Israel, whose territory had been an English protectorate before becoming an independent state), attached to the principle of Parliament s sovereignty, resisted the endowment of unelected judges with the power to invalidate acts performed by the people s legitimate representatives. The scenario began to change with the adoption of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms in 1982. On that occasion, fundamental rights were put into a legal document tagged with supremacy and rigidity; judges and courts having been authorized to invalidate norms that clearly did not respect such rights. However, to accommodate the new practice without sacrificing the constitutional tradition more accustomed to the sovereignty of Parliament, some arrangements were made in order to allow that the last word on the interpretation of constitutionallyprotected rights would remain with the legislator. Thus a new pattern of judicial review appeared in which the Judiciary plays a significant, but not decisive role in protecting fundamental rights. This pattern, herein called weak-form judicial review, inspired the UK herself and other former colonies to adopt some form of judicial review, in the years that marked the turn of the 20th century to the 21st. The present paper intends to present the characteristics of this new pattern, comparing it to the traditional (strong) judicial review pattern, and it eventually elaborates on the possible receptivity to the new system by member countries of the civil law family of nations.