In this Bloomberg Law commentary (Jan. 5, 2026), attorney Abbe David Lowell argues that authoritarian-leaning leaders often target lawyers first because lawyers are essential to protecting rights and checking executive power. He reframes Shakespeare’s “let’s kill all the lawyers” as a warning: eliminating lawyers makes it easier to undermine democracy. Lowell says President Donald Trump’s …
Vieira, O. V. (2024). Battle of powers. Wilson Center & FGV São Paulo Law School. n the epilogue of Battle of Powers, Oscar Vilhena Vieira argues that Brazil’s democracy survived the Bolsonaro era because constitutional institutions—above all the Supreme Federal Tribunal (STF) and the Superior Electoral Tribunal (TSE)—embraced a role of defensive democracy. From 2019 …
In early 2026, the legal fight over President Donald Trump’s executive orders targeting major U.S. law firms is moving into a new phase. The orders sought to restrict lawyers’ security clearances and encouraged federal agencies to scrutinize government contracts connected to firms’ clients, citing firms’ political ties or high-profile adversarial hires. Four firms—Perkins Coie, …
Landau, D., & Dixon, R. (2019). Abusive judicial review: courts against democracy. UC Davis L. Rev., 53, 1313. Both in the United States and around the world, courts are generally conceptualized as the last line of defense for the liberal democratic constitutional order. But this Article shows that it is not uncommon for judges to issue decisions …
Helmke, G. (2004). Courts under constraints: judges, generals, and presidents in Argentina. Cambridge University Press. This study offers a theoretical framework for understanding how institutional instability affects judicial behavior under dictatorship and democracy. In stark contrast to conventional wisdom, the central findings of the book contradict some assumptions that only independent judges rule against the government …
Gibler, D. M., & Randazzo, K. A. (2011). Testing the effects of independent judiciaries on the likelihood of democratic backsliding. American Journal of Political Science, 55(3), 696-709. The authors test the efficacy of judicial independence in preventing regime reversals toward authoritarianism. Using a dataset of judicial constraints across 163 different countries from 1960 to 2000, they find …
Castagnola, A. (2017). Manipulating courts in new democracies: forcing judges off the bench in Argentina. Routledge. When can the Executive manipulate the composition of a Court? What political factors explain judicial instability on the bench? Using original field data from Argentina’s National Supreme Court and all twenty-four Provincial Supreme Courts, Andrea Castagnola develops a novel theory …
Bakiner, O. (2020). Endogenous sources of judicial power: parapolitics and the Supreme Court of Colombia. Comparative Politics, 52(4), 603-624. Courts’ legal-constitutional authority, strategic interactions with elected branches, and ideational factors are acknowledged as rival theoretical frameworks of judicial power, i.e. courts’ legal and practical power to make and enforce decisions, including politically assertive ones. This …
Bakiner, O. (2016). Judges Discover Politics: Sources of Judges’ Off-Bench Mobilization in Turkey. Journal of Law and Courts, 4(1), 131-157. When do judges initiate public action outside the courtroom? What kinds of political activities do they engage in? What are the consequences of their interactions with social and political actors? This article investigates judges’ efforts to influence …
Israel’s Supreme Court ruled that the government’s effort to dismiss Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara was unlawful, reinforcing judicial checks on executive power. In a decision issued by a seven-judge panel, the Court held that the cabinet’s March no-confidence vote against Baharav-Miara was null and void because it bypassed the legally required procedure, which mandates consultation …