Introduction: The Functions of Courts in Authoritarian Politics

Abstract

Two decades ago, Martin Shapiro urged public law scholars to expand their horizons and begin studying "any public law other than constitutional law, any court other than the Supreme Court, any public lawmaker other then the judge, and any country other than the United States" (Shapiro 1989). Shapiro recognized that American public law scholarship stood at the margins of political science because it did not adequately engage the broad questions in the field. Perhaps more importantly, Shapiro recognized that judicial institutions had become important political players in a number of countries and that a "judicialization of politics" was on the advance across much of the world. Since Shapiro's first call for more comparative scholarship, there has been an explosion in the judicial politics literature focused on a variety of regions and themes, including the role of courts in democratizing countries, the relationship between law and social movements, and the judicialization of international politics. However, there has been relatively little research on the dynamics of judicial politics in non-democracies. 1 This gap in the literature is likely the result of a long-standing presumption among many political scientists that courts in authoritarian regimes serve as mere pawns of their rulers, and that they therefore lack any independent influence in political life. Note: This introduction includes material from The Struggle for Constitutional Power: Law, Politics, and Economic Development in Egypt by Tamir Moustafa (Cambridge University Press, 2007). For a more detailed elaboration of the theoretical framework undergirding this introduction, see Chapter 2, "The Politics of Domination: Law and Resistance in Authoriatarian States."

Do Political Connections Buffer Firms from or Bind Firms to the Government? A Study of Corporate Charitable Donations of Chinese Firms

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