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Rewarding judicial independence: Evidence from the Italian Constitutional Court

Author

Listed:
  • Nadia Fiorino

    (Dipartimento di Ingegneria Industriale e dell'Informazione e di Economia - UNIVAQ - Università degli Studi dell'Aquila = University of L'Aquila)

  • Nicolas Gavoille

    (CREM - Centre de recherche en économie et management - UNICAEN - Université de Caen Normandie - NU - Normandie Université - UR - Université de Rennes - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique)

  • Fabio Padovano

    (CREM - Centre de recherche en économie et management - UNICAEN - Université de Caen Normandie - NU - Normandie Université - UR - Université de Rennes - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique)

Abstract

We use data about the Italian Constitutional Court (1956-2005) to verify an implication of the “revisionist” explanations of judicial independence with respect to judicial appointments, namely that elected politicians reward more independent justices with appointments after the Court tenure. The empirical strategy is two-step. First, we estimate a logit fixed-effect model to evaluate the personal degree of independence for each Italian justice reporter. This “judge-effect” is based on the proneness of a judge to declare the constitutional illegitimacy of a law controlling for the environmental conditional phenomena. Second, we verify to what extent this degree of independence affects the probability of obtaining a politically controlled occupation after the end of the mandate at the Court. Our results, obtained by a variety of estimators to check their robustness, strongly support the revisionist view.
(This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)

Suggested Citation

  • Nadia Fiorino & Nicolas Gavoille & Fabio Padovano, 2015. "Rewarding judicial independence: Evidence from the Italian Constitutional Court," Post-Print halshs-01183207, HAL.
    • Handle: RePEc:hal:journl:halshs-01183207
    DOI: 10.1016/j.irle.2015.05.002
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    More about this item

    Keywords

    judicial independence; revisionist view; post-Court political appointments;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior
    • H1 - Public Economics - - Structure and Scope of Government

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