This paper assesses the extent to which elected power holders informally intervene in the judiciaries of new democracies, an acknowledged but under-researched topic in studies of judicial politics. The paper first develops an empirical strategy for the study of informal interference based on...

Human rights attorneys and civil society groups in Africa have recently focused their advocacy efforts on sub-regional courts associated with economic integration communities in East, West and Southern Africa. The East African Court of Justice (EACJ), the Court of Justice of the Economic...

This article documents the substantive contributions women judges make to international courts. It moves beyond symbolic and descriptive analyses of why gender matters on international courts and opens up a new discussion on the need to more closely evaluate the contributions women judges bring...

In 1991 the Ethiopian Revolution Democratic Front (EPRDF) toppled the old ‘socialist’ regime that had ruled the country for seventeen years. In contrast to the previous policy regime of hard control, EPRDF initiated a wide range of reforms that covered not only the tax system but also the...