Judicial Independence: Why Does De Facto Diverge from De Jure?

Bernd Hayo and Stefan Voigt

MAGKS Papers on Economics from Philipps-Universität Marburg, Faculty of Business Administration and Economics, Department of Economics (Volkswirtschaftliche Abteilung)

Abstract: An independent judiciary is often hailed as one of the most important aspects of the rule of law. Securing judicial independence (JI) via explicit constitutional rules seems straightforward and there is evidence that de jure and de facto JI are linked, at least in the long term. However, the realized degree of judicial independence often diverges significantly from the constitutionally guaranteed one. Based on a worldwide panel dataset from 1950 to 2018, we find that a negative gap, that is, when de jure JI > de facto JI, is very common. Factors associated with a decreasing gap are the number of veto players and the extent of press freedom and democracy, whereas corruption is associated with an increasing gap between de jure JI and de facto JI.

Keywords: Judicial independence; constitutional compliance; de jure; de facto; de jure-de facto gap (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H11 K38 P51 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 29 pages
Date: 2021
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-his, nep-law and nep-ore
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Journal Article: Judicial independence: Why does de facto diverge from de jure? (2023)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:mar:magkse:202105

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