Judicial Politics in Unconsolidated Democracies: An Empirical Analysis of the Ecuadorian Constitutional Court (2008–2016)

Abstract

In this article, we test the extent to which decisions by the Ecuadorian Constitutional Court (ECC) are predicted by non-legal variables. Our theoretical argument proposes that not only the presence of public actors as plaintiffs-especially those working for the executive branch-but also political salience, i.e., the degree of importance attributed to a case by the government and public opinion, plays a crucial role in explaining the outcome of judicial decisions. Original data on all abstract review decisions issued by the ECC (2008ECC ( -2016) is used to test our argument. We control for possible selection effects, incorporating a novel measure of the overall quality of argumentation and strength of cases brought before the ECC by both public and private parties, in the form of an expert survey. Consistent with our argument, the results show that even when controlling for a wide range of potential confounders, norms are more likely to be struck down by the ECC when (1) public officials claim unconstitutionality than when nonpublic parties do, and (2) cases are reported by media. In the light of the Ecuadorian case, we conclude that the formally powerful ECC is quite sensitive to governmental influence, even under an improved situation of de jure judicial protections.

The conflict between Rights of Nature and mining in Ecuador: Implications of the Los Cedros Cloud Forest case for biodiversity conservation

“…The favourability principle (referred to in Article 395 of the Constitution as ‘in dubio pro natura’) requires that, in cases with differing environmental legislation, courts should protect and ‘favour’ the Rights of Nature (Constitutional Court ruling, paragraph 35). As the highest legal authority in Ecuador, the sentence creates binding jurisprudence that sets a legal precedent to be applied by all Ecuadorian courts (Castro‐Montero & van Dijck, 2017). The ruling could play a major role in biodiversity conservation, as it is directly applicable to other PFs (4781 km 2 ), Indigenous territories (6473 km 2 ) and native vegetation outside protected areas and Indigenous territories (13,390 km 2 ) overlain by mining concessions.…”

A quantitative evaluation of judicial justice in civil cases with Chinese free trade zone enterprises as the plaintiff

“…Schwartz and Murchison (2016) used the Logit regression model to study the influence of ethnic affiliation on judicial behavior and tested whether judicial tenure can amplify or weaken this influence, thus estimating whether the Constitutional Court achieved judicial impartiality and judicial independence [ 27 ]. Castro-Montero and van Dijck (2017) used the logistic regression model to study the influencing factors of the Ecuadorian Constitutional Court decisions, exploring the extent to which judicial decisions are influenced by non-legal factors [ 28 ].…”