Multiple federal judges, including some appointed by Donald Trump, have openly criticized the U.S. Supreme Court for what they see as its “inexcusable” pattern of siding with the Trump administration by overturning lower court rulings with little or no explanation. In interviews with NBC News, ten judges expressed frustration that the conservative-majority court’s actions not …
Daniela Piana, Judicial Accountabilities in New Europe: From Rule of Law to Quality of Justice (1st ed.). London: Routledge, 2010. Summary: This volume focuses on a highly challenging aspect of all European democracies, namely the issue of combining guarantees of judicial independence and mechanisms of judicial accountability. It does so by filling the gap in European …
Thalia Gerzso,”Judicial resistance during electoral disputes: Evidence from Kenya.” Electoral Studies, vol.85 (2023), https://doi.org/10.1016/j.electstud.2023.102653. Summary: Over the last decade, African courts have played an important role in the conduct of free and fair elections. In Kenya, the Supreme Court nullified the presidential election of the incumbent. These rulings challenge the conventional wisdom that courts in hybrid …
Yan-Hao Lai, “Securitisation or Autocratisation? Hong Kong’s Rule of Law under the Shadow of China’s Authoritarian Governance.” Journal of Asian and African Studies, vol. 58, no. 1 (2022): 8-25. Summary: This article examines the nature of the legal system in Hong Kong and its process of autocratisation under the Chinese sovereign. This article suggests that, …
Maria Joshua, “Justifications of Repression in Autocracies: An Empirical Analysis of Morocco and Tunisia, 2000–2010.” Contemporary Politics, vol. 30, no.1 (2023): 108–36 Summary: How do autocrats communicate about repression? Previous studies have analysed how autocratic officials justify the repression of large-scale protests to avoid backlash effects. However, we know much less about how everyday repression …
Zeren Li, Zeyuan Wang, “Judicial Recentralization as Political Control: Evidence from the Judicial Leader Rotation in China.” Social Science Quarterly, vol. 104, no.4 (2023): 669–683. Summary: This study analyzes how authoritarian leaders use the judicial system to solve the principal–agent problem in the government hierarchy. The authors argue that autocrats recentralize court personnel to enhance …
Julio Ríos-Figueroa, Paloma Aguilar, “Justice Institutions in Autocracies: A Framework for Analysis.” Democratization, vol. 25, no. 1 (2017): 1–18. Summary: What role do justice institutions play in autocracies? The authors bring together the literatures on authoritarian political institutions and on judicial politics to create a framework to answer this question. They start from the premise …
Leonardo Puleo, Ramona Coman, “Explaining Judges’ Opposition When Judicial Independence Is Undermined: Insights from Poland, Romania, and Hungary.” Democratization, vol. 31, no. 1 (2023): 47–69. Summary: Over the past decade, governing parties in Central and Eastern Europe have dismantled liberal democracy, violating the rule of law and limiting the power of judges. This article examines …
Mert Arslanalp, T. Deniz Erkmen, “Mobile Emergency Rule in Turkey: Legal Repression of Protests during Authoritarian Transformation.” Democratization, vol. 27, no. 6 (2020): 947–69. Summary: One of the challenges of autocratizing governments in regimes with nominally democratic institutions is how to repress fundamental democratic rights while claiming to uphold the rule of law. Post-9/11 socio-legal …
Laura Gamboa, Benjamín García-Holgado, Ezequiel González-Ocantos, “Courts against Backsliding: Lessons from Latin America.” Law & Policy, vol. 46, no. 4 (2024): 358–379. Summary: The recent wave of autocratization in Latin America has put courts at the center of debates about regime and regime change. Much of the literature on the judicial politics of democratic backsliding focuses …