Describe the relationship between parties and judicial independence.

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

“countries with more fragmented political systems provide more political space for the judiciary to act independently. For instance, a presidential system’s division of the executive and legislature raises the possibility of a divided government in which the judiciary may feel it can act more independently because the other branches disagree with one another. A parliamentary system with many parties that requires a coalition government can create a similar context for judicial independence. Similarly, weaker parties in which leaders have limited control over legislators encourage judicial independence. In new democracies, these same factors make political leaders fear that their opponents will gain power and exclude them via extra-constitutional means, so they support creating judicial review as a safety measure (Yadav and Mukherjee 2014). Judicial independence is less likely when courts do not feel they have the power to counter a strong majority consensus among elected officials. Matthew Ingram (2016), on the other hand, argued that judges’ beliefs were a crucial ingredient. Examining local courts’ strength and independence in our case studies of Brazil and Mexico, he found that the presence of judges who were ideologically committed to reforms explained where reforms happened better than did the structure of political competition.”