Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-j824f Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-08T06:29:30.777Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Limits of Judicial Independence: A Model with Illustration from Venezuela under Chávez

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 April 2014

MATTHEW M. TAYLOR
MATTHEW M. TAYLOR*
Affiliation:
Matthew M. Taylor is an assistant professor at the School of International Service, American University. Email: [email protected].
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This paper presents a heuristic model of judicial independence that illustrates how it is that changes in de facto judicial independence may occur, even in the absence of overt institutional changes in de jure protections. The model is illustrated by the marked decline in the independence of Venezuela's high court between 1998 and 2010, under President Hugo Chávez. Focusing on the trade-off that courts face between jurisprudential change and policy change, the paper demonstrates how courts – even those that closely mirror the executive branch's policy preferences – may enter into conflict with dominant executives, and find their judicial independence restricted by informal means.

Spanish abstract

Este artículo presenta un modelo heurístico de la independencia judicial que ilustra cómo es que cambios en la independencia judicial de facto se pueden dar, incluso ante la ausencia de cambios en las protecciones de jure. El modelo se hace evidente en el marcado declive en la independencia de la corte suprema de Venezuela entre 1998 y 2010, bajo la presidencia de Hugo Chávez. Centrándose en el equilíbrio que las cortes necesitan mantener entre el cambio jurisprudencial y el cambio político, el artículo demuestra cómo que las cortes – incluso aquellas que reflejan cercanamente las preferencias políticas de la rama ejecutiva – pueden entrar en conflicto con los ejecutivos dominantes, y encontrar restringida su independencia judicial por medios informales.

Portuguese abstract

Este artigo apresenta um modelo heurístico da independência judicial que demonstra como mudanças de facto na independência judicial podem ocorrer, mesmo sem evidentes mudanças institucionais nas proteções de jure. O modelo é ilustrado pela clara redução da independência do Supremo Tribunal venezuelano entre 1998 e 2010, durante o governo de Hugo Chávez. Tendo como foco o equilíbrio que os tribunais procuram manter, entre mudanças da jurisprudência e mudanças nas diretrizes das políticas públicas, o artigo demonstra como tribunais – até mesmo aqueles que estão próximos às preferências políticas do Executivo – podem entrar em conflito com membros dominantes do Executivo e ter sua independência judicial restringida por meios informais.

Keywords

courtsjudicial independenceHugo ChávezVenezuelacortesindependencia judicialHugo ChávezVenezuelatribunaisindependência judicialHugo ChávezVenezuela
Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Latin American Studies , Volume 46 , Issue 2 , May 2014 , pp. 229 - 259
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Representative works include Domingo, Pilar, ‘Judicial Independence: The Politics of the Supreme Court in Mexico’, Journal of Latin American Studies, 32: 3 (2000), pp. 705–35CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Larkins, Christopher M., ‘Judicial Independence and Democratization: A Theoretical and Conceptual Analysis’, American Journal of Comparative Law, 44: 4 (1996), pp. 605–26CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Prillaman, William C., The Judiciary and Democratic Decay in Latin America: Declining Confidence in the Rule of Law (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2000)Google Scholar.

2 See, for example, Helmke, Gretchen, Courts under Constraints: Judges, Generals, and Presidents in Argentina (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Kapiszewski, Diana, ‘Tactical Balancing: High Court Decision Making on Politically Crucial Cases’, Law & Society Review, 45: 2 (2011), pp. 471–506CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and High Courts and Economic Governance in Argentina and Brazil (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012).

3 William Barndt, ‘Executive Assaults in South America (1979–2006)’, unpubl. PhD diss., Princeton University, 2008. On institutional crises, see Helmke, Gretchen, ‘The Origins of Institutional Crises in Latin America’, American Journal of Political Science, 54: 3 (2010), pp. 737–50CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Pérez-Liñán, Aníbal, ‘Pugna de poderes y crisis de gobernabilidad: hacia un nuevo presidencialismo?’, Latin American Research Review, 38: 3 (2003), pp. 149–64CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 Valenzuela, Arturo, ‘Latin American Presidencies Interrupted’, Journal of Democracy, 15: 4 (2004), pp. 5–19CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 Mainwaring, Scott, ‘From Representative Democracy to Participatory Competitive Authoritarianism: Hugo Chávez and Venezuelan Politics’, Perspectives on Politics, 10: 4 (2012), pp. 955–67CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6 Petkoff, Teodoro, ‘Elections and Political Power: Challenges for the Opposition’, ReVista: Harvard Review of Latin America (autumn 2008), pp. 11–13Google Scholar.

7 Kornblith, Miriam, ‘Venezuela: calidad de las elecciones y calidad de la democracia’, América Latina Hoy, 45 (2007), pp. 109–24Google Scholar; Corrales, Javier, ‘A Setback for Chávez’, Journal of Democracy, 22: 1 (2011), pp. 122–36Google Scholar; Corrales, Javier and Penfold, Michael, Dragon in the Tropics: Hugo Chávez and the Political Economy of Revolution in Venezuela (Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution, 2011)Google Scholar, p. 2; Mainwaring, ‘From Representative Democracy’, p. 955.

8 Ellner, Steve, ‘Hugo Chávez's First Decade in Office: Breakthroughs and Shortcomings’, Latin American Perspectives, 37: 1 (2010), pp. 77–96CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Spanakos, Anthony Peter, ‘Citizen Chávez: The State, Social Movements, and Publics’, Latin American Perspectives, 38: 1 (2011), pp. 14–27CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9 Mainwaring, ‘From Representative Democracy’, p. 961.

10 Watch, Human Rights, A Decade under Chávez: Political Intolerance and Lost Opportunities for Advancing Human Rights in Venezuela (Washington, DC: Human Rights Watch, 2008), pp. 36–7Google Scholar.

11 Fiorina, Morris, ‘Formal Models in Political Science’, American Journal of Political Science, 19: 1 (1975), pp. 137–9CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

12 Tiede, Lydia Brashear, ‘Judicial Independence: Often Cited, Rarely Understood’, Journal of Contemporary Legal Issues, 15 (2006), p. 152Google Scholar.

13 Shapiro, Martin, Courts: A Comparative and Political Analysis (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1981), p. 34Google Scholar.

14 Following McNollgast's example, the high court and the executive are modelled here as single anthropomorphic rational actors rather than collectivities that are ‘subject to the various pathologies of majority rule institutions’. The model assumes that the court follows the median justice's preferences, although this simplifying assumption could be relaxed with no effect. McNollgast, ‘Politics and the Courts: A Positive Theory of Judicial Doctrine and the Rule of Law’, Southern California Law Review, 68 (1995), p. 1637.

15 Dahl, Robert A., ‘Decision-Making in a Democracy: The Supreme Court as a National Policy-Maker’, Journal of Public Law, 6 (1957), pp. 279–95Google Scholar.

16 Landes, William and Posner, Richard, ‘The Independent Judiciary in an Interest-Group Perspective’, Journal of Law and Economics, 18: 3 (1975), pp. 875–901CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Whittington, Keith, ‘“Interpose Your Friendly Hand”: Political Supports for the Exercise of Judicial Review by the United States Supreme Court’, American Political Science Review, 99: 4 (2005), pp. 583–96CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

17 Baum, Lawrence, Judges and Their Audiences: A Perspective on Judicial Behavior (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006)Google Scholar.

18 Kapiszewski, Diana and Taylor, Matthew, ‘Doing Courts Justice? Studying Judicial Politics in Latin America’, Perspectives on Politics, 6: 4 (2008), pp. 741–67CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

19 Courts here are assumed to favour less jurisprudential change per unit of policy change than the executive, but this need not be the case. Even when the court's preferences invert this assumption, the logic of the model remains the same – that is, the key issue that determines de facto independence is the difference between the slopes of the two branches’ preferences, not the slopes themselves.

20 Keck, Thomas M., ‘Party, Policy, or Duty: Why Does the Supreme Court Invalidate Federal Statutes?’, American Political Science Review, 101: 2 (2007), p. 323CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Whittington, Keith E., ‘Once More Unto the Breach: Post-Behavioralist Approaches to Judicial Politics’, Law & Social Inquiry, 25 (spring 2000), pp. 601–32CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

21 There is no inherent reason to assume that the preference functions or the cost of override functions are linear, and in fact, one might suppose that both players are likely to trade less jurisprudential change for each additional unit of policy change as they move away from (pe, J*). Limitations of space force me to ignore these possibilities here.

22 De facto independence stands in contrast to de jure independence, or what might be termed parchment protections. Feld and Voigt offer measures of de jure and de facto independence that illustrate how empirical measures of the two types of independence can differ significantly: see Feld, Lars and Voigt, Stefan, ‘Economic Growth and Judicial Independence: Cross Country Evidence Using a New Set of Indicators’, European Journal of Political Economy, 19 (2003), pp. 497–527CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

23 This model is inspired by a model of central bank independence developed in Eijffinger, Sylvester C. W. and Hoeberichts, Marco, ‘Central Bank Accountability and Transparency: Theory and Some Evidence’, International Finance, 5: 1 (2002), pp. 73–96CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

24 The triggers for executive reaction need not be restricted to particular cases. Indeed, a series of decisions in separate cases may trigger a response, as in Roosevelt's response to a series of court cases threatening New Deal legislation. Even more nebulously, the executive may react simply to the perception that the court may someday rule against its preferences.

25 Epstein, Lee, Knight, Jack and Shvetsova, Olga, ‘The Role of Constitutional Courts in the Establishment and Maintenance of Democratic Systems of Government’, Law and Society Review, 35: 1 (2001), pp. 117–64CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

26 Because the model shows the preferences of only two actors, the perspectives of other actors like the legislature are assumed to be endogenous to the costs of override.

27 It should be noted that the two players’ ideal points are not shown in Figures 1 or 2. The model simply assumes that the ideal points lie somewhere on the respective preference function.

28 Domingo, Pilar, ‘Rule of Law, Citizenship, and Access to Justice in Mexico’, Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos, 15: 1 (1999), pp. 151–91CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

29 Domingo, ‘Judicial Independence’.

30 Toma, Eugenia F., ‘A Contractual Model of the Voting Behavior of the Supreme Court: The Role of the Chief Justice’, International Review of Law and Economics, 16: 4 (1996), pp. 433–48CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

31 Tiede, ‘Judicial Independence’.

32 As Ferejohn notes, ‘the low frequency of impeachment [in the United States] should not be seen as evidence of the security of constitutional protection, because this may be due as much to judges’ reluctance to make politically controversial decisions as to any display of congressional virtue’. Ferejohn, John, ‘Independent Judges, Dependent Judiciary’, Southern California Law Review, 72 (1999), p. 358Google Scholar.

33 Such an exercise need not necessarily affect the independence of the Supreme Court (although in the case of the Judiciary Act's repeal, the court was adjourned for 14 months in any regard), but the ability to undertake such an effort implies relatively low costs of override.

34 Marshall, Thomas, Public Opinion and the Supreme Court (New York: Unwin Hyman, 1989), p. 97Google Scholar.

35 Mishler, William and Sheehan, Reginald, ‘The Supreme Court as a Countermajoritarian Institution? The Impact of Public Opinion on Supreme Court Decisions’, American Political Science Review, 87: 1 (1993), pp. 87–101CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

36 Caldeira, Gregory, ‘Public Opinion and the U. S. Supreme Court: FDR's Court-Packing Plan’, American Political Science Review, 81: 4 (1987), pp. 1139–53CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

37 For example, Chavez, Rebecca Bill, Rule of Law in Nascent Democracies: Judicial Politics in Argentina (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2004)Google Scholar.

38 Finkel, Jodi, Judicial Reform as Political Insurance: Argentina, Peru and Mexico in the 1990s (Notre Dame, IL: University of Notre Dame Press, 2008)Google Scholar; Ginsburg, Tom, Judicial Review in New Democracies: Constitutional Courts in Asian Cases (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

39 Landes and Posner, ‘The Independent Judiciary’.

40 Ramseyer, J. Mark, ‘The Puzzling (In)Dependence of Courts: A Comparative Approach’, Journal of Legal Studies, 23 (1994), pp. 721–47CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Domingo, ‘Judicial Independence’.

41 Staton, Jeffrey, Judicial Power and Strategic Communication in Mexico (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; ‘Judicial Policy Implementation in Mexico City and Mérida’, Comparative Politics, 37 (2004), pp. 41–60.

42 Shapiro, Courts, p. 124.

43 McNollgast, ‘Conditions for Judicial Independence’, Journal of Contemporary Legal Issues, 15 (2006), p. 110Google Scholar.

44 Gibson, James and Caldeira, Gregory, ‘Defenders of Democracy? Legitimacy, Popular Acceptance, and the South African Constitutional Court’, Journal of Politics, 65: 1 (2003), p. 2CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

45 Shapiro, Courts.

46 Diana Kapiszewski and Matthew M. Taylor, ‘Compliance: Conceptualizing, Measuring, and Explaining Adherence to Judicial Rulings’, Law & Social Inquiry, 38: 4 (2013), pp. 803–35.

47 Pereira, Anthony, Political (In)Justice: Authoritarianism and the Rule of Law in Brazil, Chile, and Argentina (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2005), pp. 8, 12–13CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

48 McNollgast, ‘Conditions for Judicial Independence’, p. 125.

49 As, for example, in Iaryczower, Matías, Spiller, Pablo T. and Tommasi, Mariano, ‘Judicial Independence in Unstable Environments, Argentina 1935–1998’, American Journal of Political Science, 46: 4 (2002), p. 699CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Domingo, ‘Judicial Independence’, p. 731.

50 Similar preference curves could imply either that the court was willing to tolerate greater change to the law in exchange for achieving its policy objectives (for example, if the slope of court preferences rises as the court moves closer to the executive), or that the executive was less willing to tolerate such changes to the law (for example, if the slope of executive preferences decreases as it moves closer to the court).

51 This was not the first change in the Supreme Court's size; there had been seven successful changes in the size of the court since 1789.

52 Caldeira, ‘Public Opinion and the U. S. Supreme Court’, p. 1150.

53 Taylor, Matthew M., Judging Policy: Courts and Policy Reform in Democratic Brazil (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2008).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

54 Helmke, ‘The Origins of Institutional Crises’, p. 742 n. 9.

55 Smith, Jean Edward, ‘Stretching Executive Power in Wartime’, New York Times, 27 May 2007Google Scholar.

56 Kapiszewski, High Courts and Economic Governance.

57 Peretti, Terri, ‘A Normative Appraisal of Social Scientific Knowledge Regarding Judicial Independence’, Ohio State Law Journal, 64 (2003), p. 349Google Scholar.

58 McCoy, Jennifer, ‘Demystifying Venezuela's Hugo Chávez’, Current History (Feb. 2000), pp. 66–71Google Scholar.

59 Corrales and Penfold, Dragon in the Tropics, p. 18.

60 Daniel Levine, ‘The Logic of Bolivarian Democracy in Venezuela: Domestic and International Connections’, paper presented at the American Political Science Association, Boston, MA, Aug. 2008, p. 7; Watch, Human Rights, Rigging the Rule of Law: Judicial Independence under Siege in Venezuela (Washington, DC: Human Rights Watch, 2004), p. 8Google Scholar.

61 ‘High Court Chief Quits’, New York Times, 25 Aug. 1999.

62 Levine, ‘The Logic of Bolivarian Democracy’, p. 8.

63 Sanchez Urribarri, Raul A., ‘Courts between Democracy and Hybrid Authoritarianism: Evidence from the Venezuelan Supreme Court’, Law & Social Inquiry, 36: 4 (2011), pp. 862–5CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

64 Rohter, Larry, ‘Court Orders Venezuela to Postpone Election on Sunday’, New York Times, May 26, 2000Google Scholar.

65 Urribarri, ‘Courts between Democracy’, p. 869.

66 Forero, Juan, ‘Venezuela Supreme Court Clears 4 Military Officers in Uprising’, New York Times, 15 Aug. 2002Google Scholar.

67 Human Rights Watch, Rigging the Rule of Law, pp. 15–16.

68 There are six chambers in the Venezuelan Supreme Court, including the sala electoral and the sala constitucional.

69 Marquis, Christopher and Forero, Juan, ‘A Bitter Chávez Castigates U. S., Saying It Misjudges Him’, New York Times, 18 March 2004Google Scholar; Human Rights Watch, A Decade under Chávez, p. 45. On the dispute between the electoral and constitutional chambers of the court, see Urribarri, p. 871, citing Brewer-Carías, Allan, La sala constitucional vs el estado democrático de derecho (Caracas: El Nacional, 2004)Google Scholar.

70 Human Rights Watch, Rigging the Rule of Law, p. 18.

71 Urribarri, ‘Courts between Democracy’, p. 872.

72 Technically, the nomination was voted on three times under a two-thirds majority rule. By the rules, since a super-majority was not achieved in the first three votes, the nominee could be approved by simple majority in a fourth vote.

73 In practice this suspension could be virtually permanent, given the ‘habitual disregard’ for voting deadlines in the National Assembly. See Human Rights Watch, A Decade under Chávez, p. 47.

74 Ibid., p. 48.

75 Lower courts were also severely constrained and lower court judges were subject to blatant harassment, most notably in the case of Judge Maria Lourdes Afiuni, who was arrested in 2009 after her decision to free a Chávez opponent. International Bar Association, ‘A desconfiança na justiça: o caso Afiuni e a Independência do Judiciário na Venezuela’, report by Institute for Human Rights delegation, 8–11 Feb. 2011.

76 Corrales and Penfold, Dragon in the Tropics, p. 27.

77 Ibid., p. 35. General Baduel was convicted on charges of corruption in April 2009.

78 Romero, Simon, ‘Chavez Decree Tightens Hold on Intelligence’, New York Times, 3 June 2008Google Scholar.

79 Petkoff, ‘Elections and Political Power’, p. 11.

80 Corrales argues that Chávez preserved this façade because ‘the government has been smart enough to realize that a blatant turn to full autocracy would produce unwanted international condemnation’: see Corrales, ‘A Setback for Chávez’, p. 127.

81 Urribarri, ‘Courts between Democracy’, pp. 877–8.

82 Julio Ríos-Figueroa and Jeffrey Staton, ‘An Evaluation of Cross-National Measures of Judicial Independence’, Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, 30: 1 (2014), pp. 104–37.

83 Witold Henisz, ‘The Political Constraint Index Database’, 2010, available at www.nsd.uib.no/macrodataguide; David Cingranelli and David Richards, ‘CIRI Human Rights Data Project’, 2010, available at http://humanrightsdata.blogspot.com/p/data-documentation.html.

84 Helmke, ‘The Origins of Institutional Crises’, p. 742 n. 9.

85 Kapiszewski, High Courts and Economic Governance, pp. 155–91.