This paper studies the impact of judicial reform in Mexico. It does so using a survey about crime victimization and perceptions of insecurity (Encuesta Nacional Sobre la Inseguridad, ENSI) from 2005, 2008, and 2009 in eleven Mexican cities, three of which implemented the reform in 2007 and 2008. It shows judicial reform reduces victimization but also lowers perceptions of security. These result...

Recent empirical scholarship that shows that judges decide cases in a manner that is consistent with their political biases has motivated a stream of proposals for reform, including judicial term limits, limitations on judicial review of statutes and agency actions, revision of the judicial appointments process, and mandatory mixed party representation on judicial panels. However, these proposa...

Judicial independence is widely considered to be a foundation for the rule of law (Council of Europe 1998; United Nations 1985), and establishing judicial independence in developing and transition economies has become a major goal of donor-supported legal and judicial reform programs. This topic brief will address three questions related to judicial independence. First, what exactly does "judic...

In 2014 we celebrate the 150 anniversary of the Judicial Reform in Russia. The 1860 are known as a time of major reforms in various spheres of life, one of them being the Judicial Reform adopted in 1864. Before 1864 civil procedure was considered to be the classical form of inquisitorial justice with active judges and passive parties. Inquisitorial procedure was a written process conducted in s...

The tension between judicial review and democratic principles remains the most significant problem in modern constitutional theory. Yet this tension may be resolved in the context of ‘‘political stalemate.’’ Political stalemate arises when both parties in a two-party system find it electorally advantageous to ignore a given political issue, even when majorities favor reform on that issue. This ...

INTRODUCTION Since the collapse of the bubble economy in the early 1990’s, Japan’s industrial society experienced a drastic increase in individual employment disputes. At the same time, union management disputes have been clearly on the decline since the 1980’s. To cope with such a structural change of labor disputes, it was necessary to restructure the labor dispute resolution system, which wa...

In his first four years as Chief Justice of the United States, William Howard Taft convinced Congress to pass two reform bills that substantially enhanced the power of the federal courts, the Supreme Court, and the Chief Justice. In this article, I explore the causes and the consequences of those reforms. I detail how Taft’s political entrepreneurship— specifically the building of reputations, ...