Three Kellogg-affiliated scholars recently published a paper in Law & Policy entitled “Courts Against Backsliding” – Keough School faculty member Laura Gamboa, a Kellogg faculty fellow and former Kellogg PhD Fellows Benjamin Garcia-Holgado (PhD ‘23) and Ezequiel González‐Ocantos (PhD '12).
The paper explores the ways in which the recent wave of autocratization in Latin America has put courts at the center of discussions regarding regimes. It takes a different approach to examining the judicial politics of democratic backsliding, providing illustrative examples of independent courts in Argentina, Colombia, and Mexico that successfully fought back against reforms that jeopardized democratic stability. The paper focuses on horizontal accountability intervention in order to further knowledge on how judges can also complicate autocratization.
Gamboa is an assistant professor of democracy and global affairs in the Keough School of Global Affairs at the University of Notre Dame with research centered on the survival and quality of democratic systems. Garcia-Holgado is now an assistant professor of political science and international relations at the University of Delaware. His research focuses on regime change, populism, judicial politics, Latin American politics, and qualitative methods. Ezequiel González‐Ocantos is a professor of comparative and judicial politics at the University of Oxford.