The Politics of Judicial Independence: Exploring Supreme Court Decisions in Uruguay (1985-2018)
What is the role the Judiciary in Uruguayan politics? Like most Latin American countries, social science research among domestic scholars has been mainly focused on political institutions and social policies. Yet, recent political developments have challenged this focus, as judicial institutions have become more salient in the political process, either reinforcing or reverting important policy decisions of governments. While some pundits have argued that the judiciary has become more politicized, others have argued for a judicialization of politics. Nevertheless, there is no evidence revealing the political nature of judicial decisions made in Uruguay. This paper studies the supreme court divided decisions between 1985 and 2018, by exploring the individual decisions made by judges on every unconstitutional demand made by citizens and a wide variety of civil society organizations and pressure groups. This paper extends the W-nominate technique developed for the study of legislative bodies to the voting patterns of individual judges, showing a slack ideological profile of decisions during the period under study.