How Can Judges Challenge Dictators and Get Away With It?

Verdugo, Sergio

Publication:
How Can Judges Challenge Dictators and Get Away With It?

dc.contributor.author	Verdugo, Sergio
dc.contributor.ror	https://ror.org/02jjdwm75
dc.date.accessioned	2025-04-07T10:26:14Z
dc.date.available	2025-04-07T10:26:14Z
dc.date.issued	2021-04-13
dc.description.abstract	The literature on constitutional courts in authoritarian or hybrid regimes typically suggests that judges who challenge such regimes in high-stakes cases risk sub-stantial political backlash. Accordingly, some compar-ative constitutional law scholars argue that courts should develop strategies such as judicial avoidance or weak judicial review practices to prevent a clash with the governing regime. This Article suggests that those strategies are unnecessary where courts are able to preserve or promote democratic values without incur-ring backlash, and proposes one alternative strategy. Where feasible, judges should prefer this case-specific confrontational tactic to survival strategies, such as weak judicial review or constitutional avoidance. For this strategy to be successful, judges must identify and predict the regime’s expected costs of disobeying a ju-dicial decision. If the projected costs are high enough, the regime’s leaders might prefer to comply with the ruling. One way in which this judicial strategy can work is by triggering a constitutional paradox. This term de-scribes the dilemma dictators face when they are forced to decide whether to support the constitutionally-rooted.
dc.description.peerreviewed	yes
dc.description.status	Published
dc.format	application/pdf
dc.identifier.citation	Verdugo, S. (2021). How Can Judges Challenge Dictators and Get Away with It?. Columbia Journal of Transnational Law, 59. http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3660179.
dc.identifier.doi	http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3660179
dc.identifier.issn	0010-1931
dc.identifier.uri	https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14417/3705
dc.journal.title	Columbia Journal of Transnational Law
dc.language.iso	en
dc.page.total	53
dc.publisher	SSRN
dc.relation.department	Public Law & Global Governance
dc.relation.entity	IE University
dc.relation.school	IE Law School
dc.rights	Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International
dc.rights.accessRights	info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess
dc.rights.uri	https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/deed
dc.title	How Can Judges Challenge Dictators and Get Away With It?
dc.type	info:eu-repo/semantics/article
dc.version.type	info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion
dc.volume.number	59
dspace.entity.type	Publication
relation.isAuthorOfPublication	e79f958a-556c-4764-a06f-5483c5604817
relation.isAuthorOfPublication.latestForDiscovery	e79f958a-556c-4764-a06f-5483c5604817