Academic

Garcia, Garoupa, & Grembi on Kelsenian Constitutional Courts

By Lawrence Solum

Sofia Amaral Garcia , Nuno Garoupa, and Veronica Grembi (University of Bologna - Faculty of Economics , University of Illinois College of Law , Facoltà di Economia, Università Cattolica di Milano and Istituto di Economia e Finanza, Facoltà di Giurisprudenza, University of Rome La Sapienza) have posted Judicial Independence and Party Politics in the Kelsenian Constitutional Courts: The Case of Portugal on SSRN.  Here is the abstract:

In this paper we test to what extent the Kelsenian-type of constitutional judges are independent from political parties by studying of the Portuguese Constitutional Court. The results yield three main conclusions. First, constitutional judges in Portugal are quite sensitive to their political affiliations and their political party's presence in government when voting. Second, peer pressure is very relevant. Third, the 1997 reform that was enacted to increase judicial independence has had no robust statistically significant effect.

Full post as published by Legal Theory Blog on July 07, 2008 (boomark / email).