Judges Beyond Politics In Democracy And Dictatorship

Author : Lisa Hilbink
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 113946681X
Total Pages : 13 pages
Book Rating : 4.13/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Judges beyond Politics in Democracy and Dictatorship written by Lisa Hilbink and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2007-07-23 with total page 13 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why did formerly independent Chilean judges, trained under and appointed by democratic governments, facilitate and condone the illiberal, antidemocratic, and anti-legal policies of the Pinochet regime? Challenging the assumption that adjudication in non-democratic settings is fundamentally different and less puzzling than it is in democratic regimes, this book offers a longitudinal analysis of judicial behavior, demonstrating striking continuity in judicial performance across regimes in Chile. The work explores the relevance of judges' personal policy preferences, social class, and legal philosophy, but argues that institutional factors best explain the persistent failure of judges to take stands in defense of rights and rule of law principles. Specifically, the institutional structure and ideology of the Chilean judiciary, grounded in the ideal of judicial apoliticism, furnished judges with professional understandings and incentives that left them unequipped and disinclined to take stands in defense of liberal democratic principles, before, during, and after the authoritarian interlude.

Author : Lisa Hilbink
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9780511296772
Total Pages : 317 pages
Book Rating : 4.70/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Judges Beyond Politics in Democracy and Dictatorship: Lessons from Chile. Cambridge Studies in Law and Society. written by Lisa Hilbink and published by . This book was released on 2014-05-14 with total page 317 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why did formally independent Chilean judges, trained under and appointed by democratic governments, facilitate and condone the illiberal, antidemocratic, and anti-legal policies of the Pinochet regime? Challenging the common assumption that adjudication in non-democratic settings is fundamentally different and less puzzling than it is in democratic regimes, this book offers a longitudinal analysis of judicial behavior, demonstrating striking continuity in judicial performance across regimes in Chile. The work explores the relevance of judges' personal policy preferences, social class, and legal philosophy, but argues that institutional factors best explain the persistent failure of judges to takes stands in defense of rights and rule of law principles. Specifically, the institutional structure and ideology of the Chilean judiciary, grounded in the ideal of judicial apoliticism, furnished judges with professional understandings and incentives that left them unequipped and disinclined to take stands in defense of liberal democratic principles, before, during, and after the authoritarian interlude.

Author : Brad Epperly
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0192583646
Total Pages : 224 pages
Book Rating : 4.42/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Political Foundations of Judicial Independence in Dictatorship and Democracy written by Brad Epperly and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2019-09-26 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book argues that explaining judicial independence-considered the fundamental question of comparative law and politics-requires a perspective that spans the democracy/autocracy divide. Rather than seeking separate explanations in each regime context, in The Political Foundations of Judicial Independence in Dictatorship and Democracy, Brad Epperly argues that political competition is a salient factor in determining levels of de facto judicial independence across regime type, and in autocracies a factor of far greater import. This is because a full " account of independence requires looking not only at the likelihood those in power might lose elections but also the variable risks associated with such an outcome, risks that are far higher for autocrats. First demonstrating that courts can and do provide insurance to former leaders, he then shows via exhaustive cross-national analyses that competition's effects are far higher in autocratic regimes, providing the first evidence for the causal nature of the relationship. Epperly argues that these findings differ from existing case study research because in democratic regimes, a lack of political competition means incumbents target the de jure independence of courts. This argument is illustrated via in-depth case study of the Hungarian Constitutional Court after the country's 2010 " and then tested globally. Blending formal theory, observational and instrumental variables models, and elite interviews of leading Hungarian legal scholars and judges, Epperly offers a new framework for understanding judicial independence that integrates explanations of both de jure and de facto independence in both democratic and autocratic regimes.

Author : William J. Quirk
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1351510436
Total Pages : 160 pages
Book Rating : 4.31/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Judicial Dictatorship written by William J. Quirk and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-07-05 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: American society has undergone a revolution within a revolution. Until the 1960s, America was a liberal country in the traditional sense of legislative and executive checks and balances. Since then, the Supreme Court has taken on the role of the protector of individual rights against the will of the majority by creating, in a series of decisions, new rights for criminal defendants, atheists, homosexuals, illegal aliens, and others. Repeatedly, on a variety of cases, the Court has overturned the actions of local police or state laws under which local officials are acting. The result, according to Quirk and Birdwell, is freedom for the lawless and oppression for the law abiding. 'Judicial Dictatorship' challenges the status quo, arguing that in many respects the Supreme Court has assumed authority far beyond the original intent of the Founding Fathers. In order to avoid abuse of power, the three branches of the American government were designed to operate under a system of checks and balances. However, this balance has been upset. The Supreme Court has become the ultimate arbiter in the legal system through exercise of the doctrine of judicial review, which allows the court to invalidate any state or federal law it considers inconsistent with the constitution. Supporters of judicial review believe that there has to be a final arbiter of constitutional interpretation, and the Judiciary is the most suitable choice. Opponents, Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln among them, believed that judicial review assumes the judicial branch is above the other branches, a result the Constitution did not intend. The democratic paradox is that the majority in America agreed to limit its own power. Jefferson believed that the will of the majority must always prevail. His faith in the common man led him to advocate a weak national government, one that derived its power from the people. Alexander Hamilton, often Jefferson's adversary, lacking such faith, feared "the amazing violence and turbulence of the democratic spirit." This led him to believe in a strong national government, a social and economic aristocracy, and finally, judicial review. This conflict has yet to be resolved. 'Judicial Dictatorship' discusses the issue of who will decide if government has gone beyond its proper powers. That issue, in turn, depends on whether the Jeffersonian or Hamiltonian view of the nature of the person prevails. In challenging customary ideological alignments of conservative and liberal doctrine, 'Judicial Dictatorship' will be of interest to students and professionals in law, political scientists, and those interested in U.S. history.

Author : Adam Przeworski
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780521532662
Total Pages : 338 pages
Book Rating : 4.63/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Democracy and the Rule of Law written by Adam Przeworski and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2003-07-21 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book addresses the question of why governments sometimes follow the law and other times choose to evade the law. The traditional answer of jurists has been that laws have an autonomous causal efficacy: law rules when actions follow anterior norms; the relation between laws and actions is one of obedience, obligation, or compliance. Contrary to this conception, the authors defend a positive interpretation where the rule of law results from the strategic choices of relevant actors. Rule of law is just one possible outcome in which political actors process their conflicts using whatever resources they can muster: only when these actors seek to resolve their conflicts by recourse to la, does law rule. What distinguishes 'rule-of-law' as an institutional equilibrium from 'rule-by-law' is the distribution of power. The former emerges when no one group is strong enough to dominate the others and when the many use institutions to promote their interest.

Author : Randall Peerenboom
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 1107375584
Total Pages : 440 pages
Book Rating : 4.81/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Judicial Independence in China written by Randall Peerenboom and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2009-11-23 with total page 440 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume challenges the conventional wisdom about judicial independence in China and its relationship to economic growth, rule of law, human rights protection, and democracy. The volume adopts an interdisciplinary approach that places China's judicial reforms and the struggle to enhance the professionalism, authority, and independence of the judiciary within a broader comparative and developmental framework. Contributors debate the merits of international best practices and their applicability to China; provide new theoretical perspectives and empirical studies; and discuss civil, criminal, and administrative cases in urban and rural courts. This volume contributes to several fields, including law and development and the promotion of rule of law and good governance, globalization studies, neo-institutionalism and studies of the judiciary, the emerging literature on judicial reforms in authoritarian regimes, Asian legal studies, and comparative law more generally.

Author : Steven Levitsky
Publisher : Crown
ISBN 13 : 1524762946
Total Pages : 321 pages
Book Rating : 4.40/5 ( download)

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Download or read book How Democracies Die written by Steven Levitsky and published by Crown. This book was released on 2019-01-08 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “Comprehensive, enlightening, and terrifyingly timely.”—The New York Times Book Review (Editors' Choice) WINNER OF THE GOLDSMITH BOOK PRIZE • SHORTLISTED FOR THE LIONEL GELBER PRIZE • NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The Washington Post • Time • Foreign Affairs • WBUR • Paste Donald Trump’s presidency has raised a question that many of us never thought we’d be asking: Is our democracy in danger? Harvard professors Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt have spent more than twenty years studying the breakdown of democracies in Europe and Latin America, and they believe the answer is yes. Democracy no longer ends with a bang—in a revolution or military coup—but with a whimper: the slow, steady weakening of critical institutions, such as the judiciary and the press, and the gradual erosion of long-standing political norms. The good news is that there are several exit ramps on the road to authoritarianism. The bad news is that, by electing Trump, we have already passed the first one. Drawing on decades of research and a wide range of historical and global examples, from 1930s Europe to contemporary Hungary, Turkey, and Venezuela, to the American South during Jim Crow, Levitsky and Ziblatt show how democracies die—and how ours can be saved. Praise for How Democracies Die “What we desperately need is a sober, dispassionate look at the current state of affairs. Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, two of the most respected scholars in the field of democracy studies, offer just that.”—The Washington Post “Where Levitsky and Ziblatt make their mark is in weaving together political science and historical analysis of both domestic and international democratic crises; in doing so, they expand the conversation beyond Trump and before him, to other countries and to the deep structure of American democracy and politics.”—Ezra Klein, Vox “If you only read one book for the rest of the year, read How Democracies Die. . . .This is not a book for just Democrats or Republicans. It is a book for all Americans. It is nonpartisan. It is fact based. It is deeply rooted in history. . . . The best commentary on our politics, no contest.”—Michael Morrell, former Acting Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (via Twitter) “A smart and deeply informed book about the ways in which democracy is being undermined in dozens of countries around the world, and in ways that are perfectly legal.”—Fareed Zakaria, CNN

Author : David M. Driesen
Publisher : Stanford University Press
ISBN 13 : 1503628620
Total Pages : 323 pages
Book Rating : 4.25/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Specter of Dictatorship written by David M. Driesen and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2021-07-20 with total page 323 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reveals how the U.S. Supreme Court's presidentialism threatens our democracy and what to do about it. Donald Trump's presidency made many Americans wonder whether our system of checks and balances would prove robust enough to withstand an onslaught from a despotic chief executive. In The Specter of Dictatorship, David Driesen analyzes the chief executive's role in the democratic decline of Hungary, Poland, and Turkey and argues that an insufficiently constrained presidency is one of the most important systemic threats to democracy. Driesen urges the U.S. to learn from the mistakes of these failing democracies. Their experiences suggest, Driesen shows, that the Court must eschew its reliance on and expansion of the "unitary executive theory" recently endorsed by the Court and apply a less deferential approach to presidential authority, invoked to protect national security and combat emergencies, than it has in recent years. Ultimately, Driesen argues that concern about loss of democracy should play a major role in the Court's jurisprudence, because loss of democracy can prove irreversible. As autocracy spreads throughout the world, maintaining our democracy has become an urgent matter.

Author : Rebecca Bill Chavez
Publisher : Stanford University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780804748124
Total Pages : 284 pages
Book Rating : 4.28/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Rule of Law in Nascent Democracies written by Rebecca Bill Chavez and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2004 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explains how the rule of law emerges and how it survives in nascent democracies. The question of how nascent democracies construct and fortify the rule of law is fundamentally about power. By focusing on judicial autonomy, a key component of the rule of law, this book demonstrates that the fragmentation of political power is a necessary condition for the rule of law. In particular, it shows how party competition sets the stage for independent courts. Using case studies of Argentina at the national level and of two neighboring Argentine provinces, San Luis and Mendoza, this book also addresses patterns of power in the economic and societal realms. The distribution of economic resources among members of a divided elite fosters competitive politics and is therefore one path to the requisite political fragmentation. Where institutional power and economic power converge, a reform coalition of civil society actors can overcome monopolies in the political realm.

Author : Gretchen Helmke
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 1107405203
Total Pages : 243 pages
Book Rating : 4.02/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Courts Under Constraints written by Gretchen Helmke and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2012-07-19 with total page 243 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is a study of how institutional instability affects judicial behavior under dictatorship and democracy.