Judicial Reform and Self-restraint. The Process of Supreme Court Independence in Argentina

ALBA RUIBAL

Latin American Politics and Society

Wiley-Blackwell

Año: 2009 vol. 51 p. 59 - 86

1531-426X

In 2003, the Argentine Executive promoted a process of Supreme Court reform that entailed a limitation of presidential attributions in the selection of justices. Afterwards, the renewed Court implemented changes to its own 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, and the party in power in the second. Instead, this study explains reforms promoted by the Executive Power and changes introduced by the Supreme Court in Argentina 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.