Judicial reform presents a paradox: What makes governing elites decide to grant power to an autonomous judiciary that will eventually curtail their own powers? The engagement of governing elites in judicial reforms is recently being explained as strategic moves to protect their interests when they can foresee a future loss of political control. Using the Mexican reform process of 1994-95, this work discusses the applicability of such perspective for this case and offers an alternative explanation based on the reformers’ need to legitimize their rule in a context marked by political competition and a discredited supreme court.
Acuña, Carlos.2002. La dinámica politico-institucional de la reforma judicial en la Argentina. Paper presented at the VII Internacional Congress of CLAD on State Reform and Public Administration, Lisbon, Portugal .
2.
Berrruecos, Susana.2002. The Mexican Supreme Court under new federalism: An analysis of constitutional controversies (1995-2000). Paper presented to the Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas (CIDE), Mexico City.
3.
Berruecos, Susana.2004. La SCJN en el contexto del nuevo federalismo. Mexico City: Instituto Federal Electoral .
4.
Bill-Chávez, Rebeca.2003. The construction of the rule of law in Argentina: A tale of two provinces. Comparative Politics35 (4): 417-37.
5.
Bill-Chávez, Rebeca.2004. The evolution of judicial autonomy in Argentina: Establishing the rule of law in an ultrapresidential system. Journal of Latin American Studies36 (3): 451-78.
6.
Cabildo, Miguel.1994. Los 25 ministros jubilados, sus historias, sus carreras, sus nombramientos. Proceso946:32-39.
7.
Cornelius, Wayne.1996. Mexican politics in transition: The breakdown of a one-party dominant regime. LA Jolla, CACenter for U.S.-Mexican Studies , University of California, San Diego.
8.
Cossío, José Ramón. 2002. La teoría constitucional de la Suprema Corte de Justicia, Doctrina Jurídica Contemporánea. México: Distribuciones Fontamara S.A.
9.
Diario de los Debates de la Cámara de Diputados. 1994 . Mexico City: Comision Permanente Del Congreso De Los Estados Unidos Mexicanos, Legislatura LVI-Año I-Primer período de la Comisión Permanente.
10.
Domingo, Pilar.1999. Judicial independence and judicial reform in Latin America. In Self-restraining state: Power and accountability in new democracies, ed. Andreas Schedler, Larry Diamond, and Marc Platter, 151-75. London: Lynne Riemer.
11.
Finkel, Jodi.2004. Judicial reform in Argentina in the 1990s: How electoral incentives shape institutional change. Latin American Research Review39 (3): 56-80.
12.
Finkel, Jodi.2005. Judicial reform as insurance policy: Mexico in the 1990s . Latin American Politics and Society47 (1): 87-113.
13.
Finkel, Jodi.2008. Judicial reform as political insurance: Argentina, Peru and Mexico. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press.
14.
Garrido, José Luis. 1989. The crisis of presidentismo. In Mexico’s alternative political futures, ed. W. A. Cornelius , J. Gentleman, and P. H. Smith, 417-34. La Jolla, CA : Center for U.S.Mexican Studies, University of California , San Diego.
15.
Garrido, Jose Luis. 1998. The crisis of presidentismo. In Mexico’s alternate political futures, ed. W. A. Cornelius , J. Gentleman, and P. H. Smith, 417-34. San Diego: University of California, Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies.
16.
Ginsburg, Tom.2003. Judicial review in new democracies: Constitutional courts in Asian cases. Cambridge, UK; Cambridge University Press..
17.
Hammergren, Linn A.1998. The politics of justice and justice reform in Latin America: The Peruvian case in comparative perspective. Boulder, CO: Westview.
18.
Hernández, Cesar Alejandro. 2004. Las controversias constitucionales y el federalismo mexicano: Las controversias de la federación contra estados y municipios, 1994-2004 . Master’s thesis, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, México.
19.
Inclán, Silvia.2003. Judicial reform and democratization in the 1990’s. PhD diss., Boston University.
20.
Inclán, Silvia.2007. El poder Judicial Mexicano: La Reforma Institucional de 1994 y sus implicaciones. In El Estado Actual de la Democracia enMéxico: Retos, Avances y Retrocesos, coord. Julio Labastida, 51-84. IIS-UNAM: México.
21.
Inclán, Silvia, and Maria Inclán .2004. Las reformas judiciales en América Latina y la rendición de cuentas del Estado. Perfiles Latinoamericanos26:55-82.
22.
Inclán, Silvia, and Alba Ruibal.2007. Judicial reform in Mexico and Argentina: Legitimacy and power building as incentives shaping institutional change in contexts of intra and inter-institutional crisis. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, Chicago, IL, August 30. http://www.allacademic.com/meta/p209334_index.html.
23.
Landry, Pierre.2008. The institutional diffusion of courts in China: Evidence from survey data. In Rule by law: The politics of courts in authoritarian regimes, ed. Tom Ginsburg and Tamir Moustafa, 207-34. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
24.
Magaloni, Beatriz.2008. Enforcing the autocratic political order and the role of courts: The case of Mexico. In Rule by law: The politics of courts in authoritarian regimes, ed. Tom Ginsburg and Tamir Moustafa, 180-206. Cambridge , UK: Cambridge University Press.
25.
Moustafa, Tamir and Tom Ginsburg.2008. Introduction. In Rule by law: The politics of courts in authoritarian regimes, ed. Tom Ginsburg and Tamir Moustafa. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
26.
Negreto, Gabriel, and Mark Ungar.1997. Independencia del Poder Judicial y Estado de derecho en América Latina: Los casos de Argentina y Venezuela . Política y gobierno4 (1): 81-114.
27.
Prillaman, William C.2000. The judiciary and democratic decay in Latin America: Declining confidence in the rule of law. Westport, CT: Praeger.
28.
Reyes Heroles, Federico, ed. 1994. 50 preguntas a los candidatos: Elecciones mexicanas 21 de agosto de1994. Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica.
29.
Sieder, Rachel, ed. 1996. Central America: Fragile transitions. New York: St. Martin’s Press/London: University of London, Institute of Latin American Studies.
30.
Skaar, Elin.2002. Judicial independence: A key to justice. An analysis of Latin America in the 1990s. PhD diss., University of California , Los Angeles.
