Exploring dissent in the Supreme Court of Argentina

Abstract

When dissents are allowed, judges must decide whether or when to write them. While the main insights of rational dissent theory have been documented and corroborated in several empirical studies, there has been much less evidence testing on how different types of dissent may affect the likelihood of dissent. Particularly, dissents in more salient cases, or more forceful dissents, may have stronger legal effects than dissents appearing in less relevant cases or very narrowly construed dissents. Our article aims to fill that gap in the literature by seeking to isolate varying levels of appeal intensity and types of dissents in the Supreme Court of Argentina. Unlike previous literature, we find that more important cases have a lower likelihood of carrying a dissenting opinion. Yet, when we breakdown dissents by type (that is, reasoned dissents versus boilerplate dissents), we find that majority decisions carrying dissents tend to be longer, but only in cases of reasoned dissents. Furthermore, we show that reasoned dissents are more likely to occur in important cases. Overall, our study highlights that not all dissents should be treated alike as different types of dissent carry different levels of collegial and effort related costs. These costs affect the likelihood of dissent in different and complex ways.

Collective Choice and Dissenting Opinions in Multimember Courts - Elements for Assessing Judicial Reasoning in Courts of Constitutional Decision Making in South America

“…Although results in Argentina's Supreme Court showed that more important cases had a lower likelihood of carrying a dissenting opinion, when analyzing the category of "reasoned dissents", they found that majority decisions carrying dissents tend to be longer and those were allocated in important cases. In Muro et al (2020).…”

El Consejo de Estado: un análisis empírico sobre los votos separados de sus consejeros

“…No obstante, este tipo de normas requieren la intervención, de forma más intensa, de un tribunal constitucional, hecho que puede provocar la disminución en la emisión de opiniones disidentes. En resumen, la teoría principal-agente es compleja y no proporciona respuestas rotundas 38 . puede resultar complejo identificar la diferencia entre el voto informal (manifestar el desacuerdo de forma oral) y el voto formal (formular la opinión disidente por escrito).…”