Judicialization of Politics in El Salvador: Strategic Use of Constitutional Adjudication and Politicized Judgments

The research paper aims to reveal the diverse mechanisms of judicialization of politics in El Salvador. It examines both the strategic use of constitutional litigation by individual actors, instead of interest groups, as well as, strategic use of legal methods and legal precedents in constitutional adjudication judgements. It focuses primarily on the analysis of recent landmark rulings of El Salvador´s Supreme Court of Justice´s Constitutional Chamber regarding the design of public policies and the annulment of several appointments of public authorities. Special attention is given to the regular imposition of provisional suspension measures to either indefinitely interrupt the validity of complete bodies of legislation (legally enforceable acts and statutes) or to prevent statutory or constitutional amendments to enter into force. The research also seeks to outline a consistent behavioral pattern -displayed by both the construction of those constitutional decisions and their legal, political and social effects- that suggest that the Justices´ of the Constitutional Chamber are actively trying to legislate and affect government policies. However, disparate rulings and total dismissal of constraining doctrines, methods and principles (such as the political question, the self-restraint doctrine the principle of separation of powers, originalism, etc.) have also revealed political bias and weakening of the judicial independence of the Chamber.