The Politics of Supreme Court Reform in Argentina: In Search of Legitimacy

ALBA RUIBAL

Chicago

Conferencia; 65th Conferencia Anual de Midwest Political Science Association; 2007

Midwest Political Science Association

This paper addresses reforms promoted by the Executive Power in 2003 in Argentina with regards to the process of nomination of supreme court judges, which increased checks and balances in that process, and reforms promoted by the new Supreme Court since that year, oriented to give more publicity and transparency to its own internal procedures. The literature on judicial reform in Latin America has developed two main explanations of the political factors that intervene in processes of institutional reforms leading to judicial independence. They have been based, respectively, on electoral incentives and divided government. Both explanatory models conceive of reforms as a way to limit other actors, the future  government in the first case, and the party in power in the second. As an alternative explanation, the paper argues that both the reform  promoted by the executive power and the changes introduced by the Supreme Court in Argentina in 2003 can be explained as movements of self-restriction, in order 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 organizations.