The impact of Presidential appointment of judges: Montesquieu or the Federalists?

Sultan Mehmood ()
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Sultan Mehmood: Aix-Marseille Univ, CNRS, AMSE, Marseille, France., https://sites.google.com/view/sultan-mehmood/home

No 2118, AMSE Working Papers from Aix-Marseille School of Economics, France

Abstract: A central idea in the institutions and development literature is whether the executive is adequately checked by the legislature and judiciary (North, 1990; Acemoglu et al., 2001; La Porta et al., 2004). This paper provides plausibly causal evidence on how increased constraints on the executive, through removal of Presidential discretion in judicial appointments, impacts judicial decision-making. In particular, we find that when the judge selection procedure in Pakistan changed, from the President appointing judges to appointments by judge peers, rulings in favor of the government decreased significantly and the quality of judicial decisions improved. The age structure of judges at the time of the reform and the mandatory retirement age law provide us with an exogenous source of variation in the implementation of the selection reform. We test for and provide evidence against potential threats to identification and alternative explanations for our findings. The analysis of mechanisms reveals that our results are explained by rulings in politically salient cases and by “patronage” judges who hold political office prior to their appointments. According to our estimates, Presidential appointment of judges results in additional land expropriations by the government worth 0.14 percent of GDP every year.

Keywords: president; judges; property rights; court subversion; expropriation risk (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D02 K11 K40 O17 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 73 pages
Date: 2021-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-law
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:aim:wpaimx:2118

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