Right Defenders, Arbiters of Political Conflicts or Simply Puppets of Political Powers? Comparing the Roles of Supreme and Constitutional Courts in Latin America

In new democracies, various reform processes have given courts an increasing political importance. The literature on judicial politics describes two main roles a constitutional or supreme court fulfills in a democracy. A court could act either more as a defender of basic rights or as an arbiter of inter-branch conflicts (Helmke and Ríos‐Figueroa 2011). But courts also often emerge as tools of strong political interest groups. Based on insights from the strategic and the attitudinal model, the paper aims at exploring the factors that explain the different roles of courts within a political system. Two Latin American third wave democracies whose courts act very differently will serve as case studies: Chile and Paraguay. The analysis will be qualitative and based on the following sources of information: the constitutions and laws of both countries, semi-structured expert interviews, biographical data of the judges of the courts, and newspapers.