Latin American Courts Going Public: Institutional Innovations for Social Participation in the Judicial Decision-Making Process

Since two decades, constitutional and supreme courts in Latin America increasingly have been engaging with the public: for instance, they include the perspectives of civil society through public hearings or extensively use social media to inform about their work. This new court behavior stands in stark contrast to the traditional image of the judges as distant from the people and it could potentially have strong effects on the role of courts in the political system and the quality of democracy. This project is the first to investigate this phenomenon in a comparative perspective for all democratic Latin American countries.
DFG, 2018-2022

Team

Dr. Cordula Tibi Weber

Associate

Elena Martínez Barahona

Santiago Basabe-Serrano

Roberto Gargarella

Carlo Guarnieri

Ezequiel Gonzalez Ocantos

Julio Ríos-Figueroa

Leitung

Prof. Dr. Mariana Llanos

Lead Research Fellow / Editor Journal of Politics in Latin America

Forschungsfragen

- What are the social participation mechanisms that Latin America’s highest courts choose to connect with the public?*
- Under which circumstances do courts decide to go public with social participation mechanisms?
- What factors explain the different intensity with which courts pursue institutional innovations?
- What explains the variation in the practical use of these mechanisms among courts?
- Which are the effects of the implementation of these institutional innovations on the courts´ public standing, the compliance with their decisions, and their relation with the elected branches of government?

Beitrag zu internationaler Forschung

In recent years Latin American constitutional and supreme courts have engaged in institutional innovations that promote the inclusion of civil society, broad interest groups, or other stakeholders in their decision-making processes. On the one hand, these institutional arrangements seek the active integration of third parties into judicial decision-making through different mechanisms, such as public hearings, monitoring commissions, or amicus curiae. On the other hand, courts promote the creation of official websites and radio and television channels, as well as the use of social media with the explicit goal of improving public knowledge, enabling debate about their work, and broadening the audiences of judicial processes. What are the motivations and circumstances that have led courts to adopt these social participation mechanisms? Our research will provide the first comprehensive dataset covering all social participation mechanisms implemented by Latin American constitutional and supreme courts. We aim to comparatively assess the scope and intensity with which Latin American highest courts with constitutional review powers go public with social participation mechanisms and to develop regional explanations of the causes and implementation of such mechanisms that may be applied and tested later in other regional contexts. Further, we want to provide a basis for future research on the effects of these mechanisms on court behavior, the relationship between courts and civil society, and the role of courts in the political system. We hope that our research will serve as a point of departure for future works focusing on the consequences of such court activities for the democratic quality of court behavior and the role of courts in democratic regimes

Erasmus Law Review | 10.2024

Public Trust, Judicial Independence and Social Media Engagement of Latin American High Courts

How is the behaviour of Latin American high courts in Twitter shaped by different levels of trust and political attacks experienced by the courts? This article shows that courts with lower levels of trust tend to be more active in social media and to produce more self-promotional or educational content than purely informational one.

Dr. Cordula Tibi Weber

Associate

Bibliotheca Ibero-Americana | 04.2024

How and Why Do Courts Tweet?: An Explorative Study of Latin American High Courts

Today, many state institutions use social media to present their work to a broader audience. Most of them tweet very frequently about different aspects of their activities or broader law topics. In this article, I explore how Latin American high courts use X, former Twitter, and propose potential explanations for their different communication strategies.

Dr. Cordula Tibi Weber

Associate

Revista de Ciencia Política | 2024

Latin American Courts Going Public: A Comparative Assessment

In the last two decades, Latin American high courts engaged in institutional innovations promoting social participation in their judicial decision-making through mechanisms as public hearings or the use of social media. This article theorizes this engagement with the public and it provides a conceptualization of such court engagement and a typology of this engagement.

Dr. Cordula Tibi Weber

Associate

GIGA Working Papers | 05.2021

High Courts and Social Media in Latin America

Welche Rolle spielen lateinamerikanische Verfassungs- und Oberste Gerichte in sozialen Medien? Wir untersuchen die Accounts von 17 Obergerichten auf Twitter, YouTube und Facebook über einen Zeitraum von einem Jahr und unterscheiden dabei zwischen der Intensität der Nutzung und dem Einfluss.

Prof. Dr. Mariana Llanos

Lead Research Fellow / Editor Journal of Politics in Latin America

Dr. Cordula Tibi Weber

Associate