Judges Commons^™

Explaining Constitutional Review In New Democracies: The Case Of Taiwan, Nuno Garoupa, Veronica Grembi, Shirley Ching-Ping Lin

Washington International Law Journal

This paper extends the empirical analysis of the determinants of judicial behavior by considering the Taiwanese case. Taiwan is a particularly interesting case because the establishment and development of constitutional review corresponds to a political transition from an authoritarian regime dominated by one party to an emerging democracy. We test the attitudinal hypothesis by making use of a new dataset of ninety-seven decisions issued by the Taiwanese constitutional court in the period between 1988 and 2008. The attitudinal hypothesis is that the Taiwanese constitutional judges respond to party interests, either because their preferences coincide with the appointer or because they …