Efforts to encourage the legal community to play a catalytic role in sustained legal development in Rwanda gave rise to specific, and in some cases life-threatening, challenges. This article explores the role of the Corps of Judicial Defenders in Rwanda and its potential to contribute both to...

According to popular wisdom, judicial independence and the rule of law are essential features of modern democracy. Drawing on the growing comparative literature on courts, we unpack this claim by focusing on two broad questions: How does the type of political regime affect judicial independence?...

This paper argues that judicial review usually emerges in response to a nation's need for an umpire to resolve federalism or separation of powers boundary line disputes. Once such an umpire is established, judicial review tends to expand to protect individual rights as well as umpiring among...

The novel coronavirus disease (COVID) pandemic has challenged an array of democratic institutions in complex, unexpected and unprecedented ways. Little academic work, however, has considered the pandemic’s impact on Canada’s judicial institutions. This paper aims to fill that gap by...

Using the policy of unified management of local courts below the province, we found that the independence of the judiciary can significantly improve the success rate of firms in administrative litigation cases, promoting the corporate fixed assets investment rate. The positive influence of...

“Being a good judge in this environment means unlearning what you learned in law school about what a judge is supposed to do. Fairness is doing things a federal judge would never do.”Active judging, where judges step away from the traditional, passive role to assist those without counsel, is...