Courts, judges, and the public in non-democracies

Abstract

In the past few decades, the world has witnessed various examples wherein elected authoritarian leaders curtailed the judiciary's power through legal reforms and coercion mechanisms. An increasing number of studies show that court curbing violates the rule of law, generates institutional crises, erodes judicial independence, and fosters subservient judicial behavior. Although there are various explanations about how judicial behavior is affected, we do not know much about the contextual factors that affect the authoritarian government’s decision to attack the judiciary; how they justify their attacks to the public, or how the citizens respond to these types of anti-liberal actions of the elected authoritarian governments. This panel includes papers that aim to explain how and under which conditions autocrats attack the judiciary; how courts respond to these actions; and how these attacks influence public attitudes towards the judiciary or the government.

Title	Details
Populist Frames and Judicial Legitimacy: Survey Experiment in Czech Republic	View Paper Details
Rally around the Rule of Law? How does European Union Rule-of-Law Enforcement Affect Public Opinion in Backsliding Member States?	View Paper Details
Court Rulings on Internet Shutdown Cases in Autocratic Contexts	View Paper Details
A Hybrid Judiciary in a Hybrid Regime: A Case Study on Hungary	View Paper Details
Court-Curbing and Public Trust in Judiciary: Evidence from Turkey	View Paper Details