Disentangling the Value of the Judicial Office in Latin America

• In Event: Poster Session: State Politics and Policy & Law and Courts
  In Poster Session: Poster Session: Law and Courts

Abstract

This project aims at exploring how much apex courts' judges benefit from their office. In particularly unstable contexts such as in Latin America, lawyers who access this high office might be hindered to develop a long-term career; therefore, they may find such an office valuable for other reasons. I argue that judicial office is perceived as a window of opportunity-stepping stone in the path toward a more advantageous post. Through their position, judges build a valuable network, acquire prestige and specialised knowledge on the internal mechanics of a high court. Both human and intellectual capital ultimately raises their net value. After some time of service, high court judges will have incentives to maximise their benefits –in terms of gains- in more valuable posts.
To test this argument, I examine whether nominees who barely managed to be appointed as high court judges were subsequently more likely to increase gains in the mid-term or develop a long-term international career after their served as judges than those who were shortlisted but not appointed. To do so, I employ a regression discontinuity design adapted to examine whether shortlisted candidates appointed as judges end up being wealthier than those who were barely left out. To accomplish such an effort from a comparative perspective, I have selected three high courts: Colombia, Peru and Ecuador. These countries reflect major, mid and minor levels of judicial instability (according to Perez-Linan & Castagnola 2016).
I will gather an original database that encompasses the earnings of the judges and the lawyers who were barely appointed -i.e., shortlisted but not appointed- in a 20-year period (2000-2020). I will estimate these earnings based on yearly reports of income tax for each subject. These reports are publicly available at the website of the national revenue service of each country. The span of time will give me enough information to cover earnings 5 year before candidates (not)being appointed to the supreme/constitutional court, the time they serve as judges and 5 years after such service. I expect to find that earnings of the lawyers appointed as judges would be significantly higher than those who were not appointed.
With this study I shed light into the understudied area of the politics behind judicial seat pursuing as well as judicial strategies to advance their careers while on the bench. If judges behave as self-interested actors, then their performance in a particularly unstable office will seek to maximize their benefits. As far as I know this study is the first to employ such a method to estimate judicial office effects over the interests of apex judges.

Author

• Pablo Valdivieso Kastner, University of Houston