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Judicial Checks On Corruption, Adriana Cordis

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Judicial oversight is widely regarded as an important check and balance on the abuse of governmental power. The literature identifies two important components of this oversight function: judicial independence and constitutional review. However, recent work using country-level data indicates that the effectiveness of constitutional review is largely determined by the rigidity of the constitution. My dissertation builds on this work by investigating whether judicial independence and constitutional review are deterrents to a specific type of abuse of power by government officials: corruption in office. Since the appropriate way to measure corruption, which is defined as the abuse of public office …