Judges and Their Loyalties: A Comparative Study Focused On the Venezuelan Supreme Court
type: CreativeWork
description: Why are courts unable to check overzealous governmental actors in Latin America? In addition to the traditional approaches to judicial decision-making, I contend that the existence of informal linkages between judges and political elites is a key explanation for judicial behavior, especially in cases in which courts are asked to hold the government accountable. In contexts where particularistic and clientelist relations prevail, judicial nominations to the highest judicial posts are consciously made to ensure the judges' loyalty to the ruling elites, thus generating judiciaries that are chronically dependent on power-holders and unable to uphold the rule of law. These informal patterns, often rooted in past political practices, and related to the quid-pro-quo distribution of political resources, may even persist across different institutional configurations and contexts. The existence and importance of judicial loyalties explains very well the limited emergence and eventual decay of judicial power in Venezuela. In this country, the existence of loyalty links between judges and predominant political elites impaired the emergence of an influential judiciary during the democratic years - a phenomenon that was particularly clear in the longstanding lack of political clout of the Venezuelan Supreme Court. Moreover, following Chávez's arrival in power in 1999, and the subsequent change of regime that took place, an institutionally empowered Venezuelan Supreme Tribunal briefly emerged as a prominent political actor - yet quickly lost its ability to remain independent and influential, as a result of the respective pressures that pro-Chávez and opposition forces placed in the judges to rule on their favor. Following a court-packing scheme carried out by Chávez's allies in 2004, and an increasingly authoritarian political environment, the Court gradually reduced its ability to check governmental authority, until notoriously becoming one of the weakest in the region. The key t…
abstract: Why are courts unable to check overzealous governmental actors in Latin America? In addition to the traditional approaches to judicial decision-making, I contend that the existence of informal linkages between judges and political elites is a key explanation for judicial behavior, especially in cases in which courts are asked to hold the government accountable. In contexts where particularistic and clientelist relations prevail, judicial nominations to the highest judicial posts are consciously made to ensure the judges' loyalty to the ruling elites, thus generating judiciaries that are chronically dependent on power-holders and unable to uphold the rule of law. These informal patterns, often rooted in past political practices, and related to the quid-pro-quo distribution of political resources, may even persist across different institutional configurations and contexts. The existence and importance of judicial loyalties explains very well the limited emergence and eventual decay of judicial power in Venezuela. In this country, the existence of loyalty links between judges and predominant political elites impaired the emergence of an influential judiciary during the democratic years - a phenomenon that was particularly clear in the longstanding lack of political clout of the Venezuelan Supreme Court. Moreover, following Chávez's arrival in power in 1999, and the subsequent change of regime that took place, an institutionally empowered Venezuelan Supreme Tribunal briefly emerged as a prominent political actor - yet quickly lost its ability to remain independent and influential, as a result of the respective pressures that pro-Chávez and opposition forces placed in the judges to rule on their favor. Following a court-packing scheme carried out by Chávez's allies in 2004, and an increasingly authoritarian political environment, the Court gradually reduced its ability to check governmental authority, until notoriously becoming one of the weakest in the region. The key t…
author: Sanchez Urribarri, Raul A.
keywords: Political Science, Social and Behavioral Sciences, Constitution, Courts, Judicial, Venezuela
date published: 2010-01-01T08:00:00Z
date modified: 2026-07-24T04:37:08Z
provider: University of South Carolina
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: University of South Carolina