The impact of judicial preferences and political context on Constitutional Court decisions: Evidence from Turkey

Aydin-Cakir, Aylin

doi:10.1093/icon/moy087

Cited by 4 publications

(4 citation statements)

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“…Next, we discuss the nature of the Court's activism and how it has been influenced by the changing political landscape. Obviously, if the Court was extremely self-restrained, it would hardly present any challenge to the political 70 • Public support of the court 71 The court's design • Jurisdiction 72 • Framework for review (the conception of the constitution, the role of international law and/or EU law) 73 • Access to the court 74 • Legal effects of decisions 75 • Terms of office and their renewability 76 • Appointment and removal procedures 77 Intra-court factors • Preferences and attitudes of individual judges 78 • The ability of judges to persuade their colleagues 79 Source: the authors.…”

Section: Determinants Of the Czech Constitutional Court's Resiliencementioning

confidence: 99%

Through selective activism towards greater resilience: the Czech Constitutional Court's interventions into high politics in the age of populism

Smekal¹,

Benák²,

Vyhnánek³

2023

Judicial Activism in an Age of Populism

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With technocratic populist Andrej Babiš leading the Czech government coalition, the country has experienced some democratic backsliding. In contrast to its Hungarian and Polish counterparts, however, the Czech Constitutional Court has been spared from executive capture. This article argues that resilient constitutional courts may act as one of the key safeguards against illiberal populism. We demonstrate that resilient constitutional courts are products of an institutional framework, which prevents court-packing by loyal allies of populist leaders, and of courts' activities that increase their reputation with the public, thus making political attacks against them overly costly. We argue that the Czech Constitutional Court has exercised an approach of selective judicial activism that focuses on keeping political competition fair while avoiding involvement in controversial socially transformative judicial decision-making which would outrage large parts of the population. Moreover, by acting as a guardian of fair political competition, the Court contributed to the further fragmentation of the political landscape, which in turn prevented the accumulation of political power, and hence the Court shielded itself from political attacks.

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Section: Determinants Of the Czech Constitutional Court's Resiliencementioning

confidence: 99%

Through selective activism towards greater resilience: the Czech Constitutional Court's interventions into high politics in the age of populism

Smekal¹,

Benák²,

Vyhnánek³

2023

Judicial Activism in an Age of Populism

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“…13 Perhaps more importantly, my original dataset expands the range of dependent variables that researchers can analyze. For both Belge (2006, 664-67) and Aydin-Cakir (2018, 1109, the primary outcome of interest is a binary measure of whether or not the TCC chose to annul a government policy-a measure of judicial constraints that my data also include. Varol, Pellegrina and Garoupa (2017, 201) also examine the frequency of dissenting votes by particular judges.…”

Section: Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

Law versus Democracy: Reputation Costs, Judicial Alliance Networks, and Democratic Erosion in Turkey

O'Donohue

2023

Preprint

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Conventional wisdom holds that independent judiciaries protect democracies from backsliding. I instead argue that courts can enable democratic erosion depending on their alignment with voters and networks with elite allies. Whereas existing theories model the judiciary’s strategic interaction with the executive and legislature, I add that executive-judicial conflicts occur in front of an influential audience: voters. Adapting the concept of “audience costs” from international relations, I develop a formal model in which executive-judicial conflict is institution-enhancing when judicial sanctions impose a “reputation cost” on politicians but institution-eroding when judicial penalties give politicians a “reputation benefit.” Findings from an original dataset of 3,000 decisions issued by Turkey’s Constitutional Court suggest that two features of judicial alliance networks pull courts out of alignment with voters and into the institution-eroding equilibrium: judicial networks with 1) partisan allies and 2) unelected allies, such as indirectly elected heads of state.

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“…In other words, the scholars were arguing that all TCC judges share similar political preferences, but they had not empirically tested this hypothesis. Creating an original data set by coding all TCC decisions taken between 1984, Aydin-Cakir (2018 has tried to empirically explain the judicial behavior of the TCC by considering the ideological preferences of the judges. Using the state-elite president versus non-state-elite president categorization of Hazama (2012), the political preferences of each judge was measured by looking at whether they were appointed by a state-elite president or non-state-elite president.…”

Section: The Turkish Constitutional Courtmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Although Aydin-Cakir (2018) has tried to delineate the political preference of each judge in order to measure the political affinity between the TCC and the incumbent government at the time each decision was taken, the validity of this measure has certain weaknesses. First, categorizing Turkish presidents as state-elite versus non-state-elite is too simplistic because certain presidents have adopted state-elite orientation although they are categorized as non-state-elite by Hazama (2012).…”

Section: The Turkish Constitutional Courtmentioning

confidence: 99%

What Do We Know about the Middle Eastern Constitutional Courts?

Aydin-Cakir¹

2021

High Courts in Global Perspective

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The impact of judicial preferences and political context on Constitutional Court decisions: Evidence from Turkey

Cited by 4 publications

References 0 publications

Through selective activism towards greater resilience: the Czech Constitutional Court's interventions into high politics in the age of populism

Through selective activism towards greater resilience: the Czech Constitutional Court's interventions into high politics in the age of populism

Law versus Democracy: Reputation Costs, Judicial Alliance Networks, and Democratic Erosion in Turkey

What Do We Know about the Middle Eastern Constitutional Courts?

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