How Do Constitutional Reforms Affect De Facto Judicial Independence?

By focusing on the Hungarian case, the main objective of this study is to assess the causal impact of judicial reforms on de facto judicial independence and to explain whether judicial independence decreases due to the structural change of the judiciary or due to the change in the political and social context that has triggered the adoption of the judicial reforms in the first place. In order to empirically show the causal impact of judicial reforms on de facto judicial independence, in this study “Synthetic Control Model” is used. This method is similar to experimental research wherein the researcher creates a treatment and control unit and empirically shows the causal impact of any intervention. In this regard, Hungary is taken as an experimental unit and from all post-communist EU member that have not adopted similar constitutional reforms a synthetic "Hungary" is created. The empirical results show what would have been the level of judicial independence if the constitutional reforms were not adopted by the ruling government in Hungary.