Stimulating “Super Judges”: the Relationship Between Institutional Design and Judicial Behavior in Latin America

Abstract

The promotion of “super judges” in the Constitutional Courts can occur in different ways, either for institutional reasons, such as the positions of President of the Court or Reporter Minister in specific cases, or by taking a position, dissident or representative, which goes beyond the technical field and has the support of public opinion. This article seeks to contribute to the national and international literature on the subject by tracing the institutional stimuli that can influence the construction of public figures by the judges of the Constitutional Courts. The theoretical reference is the work of Nuno Garoupa and Tom Ginsburg on the construction of Judicial Reputation. The research will be carried out through an exploratory and comparative analysis with a focus on the Constitutional Courts of Mexico, Colombia and Brazil, maintaining the Latin American bias and with the intention of opening the way to a new approach to this topic from the studies of Judicial reputation. Consequently, it is emphasized that the Latin American Courts can represent an interesting sample to evaluate (i) how the presence of the judicialization of politics interferes in the political performance of the judges and (ii) how the judges of the Constitutional Courts seek recognition and prestige. In their audiences, especially considering the forms of composition of these. It is preliminarily concluded that the elements of institutional design seem to constitute one of the central elements to understand the framework that defines the way in which judges build and use their reputation to obtain benefits, during and after the investiture.