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Self-Restraint in Search of Legitimacy: The Reform of the Argentine Supreme Court

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2018

Alba M. Ruibal
Alba M. Ruibal*
Affiliation:
Institute of Legal Research, National University of Mexico (UNAM). albaruibal@gmail.com.
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Abstract

In 2003, the Argentine executive promoted a process of Supreme Court reform that entailed limiting presidential attributions in the selection of justices. Then the renewed court implemented changes to its internal procedures that increased its own accountability mechanisms. The literature on the politics of institutional judicial independence in Latin America has developed two explanatory models: one presents reforms as an insurance policy, the other as a consequence of divided government. Both perspectives conceive of reforms as a result of political competition and as a way to limit other actors, the future government in the first case, the party in power in the second. This study, by contrast, explains the Argentine reforms as movements of strategic self-restriction, designed to build legitimacy and credibility, for the government and the court, respectively, in a context of social and institutional crisis and pressure from civil society.

Type
Research Article
Information
Latin American Politics and Society , Volume 51 , Issue 3 , Fall 2009 , pp. 59 - 86
Copyright
Copyright © University of Miami 2009

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