Impartiality and the legitimacy of courts: Experimental evidence from Brazil

• In Event: Prosecution in the Making IV: The Institution of Justice: Prosecutors, Politics, and Legitimacy

Abstract

Judicial and law enforcement institutions across the world face a legitimacy crisis, showing record-low levels of public support. This study examines one cause of this legitimacy crisis: procedural irregularities committed by state officials, such as judges, police officers, and prosecutors. Prior studies disagree about the importance of procedural irregularities: whereas some scholars argue that support for the justice system is lower when officials violate procedural norms, others claim that people care more about the substantive outcome of judicial decisions and typically ignore procedures. This paper synthesizes these two approaches by developing a framework to explain the conditions under which procedural irregularities—behaviors from officials that violate formal rules—affect support for judicial decisions and public trust in courts. Drawing on an original survey-experiment in Brazil, I test the hypothesis that procedural irregularities only affect public attitudes towards judicial decisions and courts when they signal that officials were partial, acting in one of three ways: 1) violating consequential individual rights, 2) offering differential treatment to individuals in similar circumstances, and 3) acting in their own self-interest.

Author

• Luiz Vilaca, Bowdoin College