Informal Institutions and Judicial Independence

Abstract

Last decade brought unprecedented variety of attacks at courts and their independence. While international organisations dedicate a lot of attention to recommendations and guidelines on how to model political systems to secure judicial independence and provide sufficient number of checks and balances, emerging scholarship suggest that many other informal factors play an important role. The attention therefore shifts to de facto judicial independence and role of formal and informal institutions in protecting or decaying the democracy. These panel addresses the topic of informal institutions influencing the functioning of judiciary. It welcomes papers based on case studies from within and outside Europe that consider a variety of informal institutions and their impact on judicial independence. In particular, it focuses on the relationship between the presence of informal institutions and court-curbing, as well as the ability of courts to resist the attacks on their independence.

Title	Details
Informality in international judicial appointments: Who gets on the bench of sub-regional courts in Africa?	View Paper Details
Understanding court-packing strategies	View Paper Details
Lawyers Without Law: How Informal Institutions Fill the Regulatory Vacuum of the Legal Education and Profession in Latin America	View Paper Details
Judicial Councils and Internal Independence of Judges: the Georgian Experience	View Paper Details