Recent Posts

VJIL Symposium: Hannah Buxbaum Comments on “Like Moths to a Flame? International Securities Litigation after Morrison: Correcting the Supreme Court’s ‘Transactional Test'”

[Hannah L. Buxbaum is Interim Dean and John E. Schiller Chair in Legal Ethics, Indiana University Maurer School of Law.] This post is part of the Virginia Journal of International Law Symposium, Volume 52, Issues 1 and 2. Other posts in this series can be found in the related posts below. Thank you to Opinio Juris for hosting this online discussion and...

VJIL Symposium: Introducing Marco Ventoruzzo’s “Like Moths to a Flame? International Securities Litigation After Morrison: Correcting the Supreme Court’s ‘Transactional Test'”

[Marco Ventoruzzo is a Professor of Law at Pennsylvania State Dickinson School of Law.] This post is part of the Virginia Journal of International Law Symposium, Volume 52, Issues 1 and 2. Other posts in this series can be found in the related posts below. Thank you very much to Opinio Juris for hosting this online discussion of my recent Virginia Journal...

VJIL Symposium: Bâli Answers to Shambayati and Ginsburg

[Aslı Ü. Bâli is Acting Professor of Law at UCLA School of Law.] This post is part of the Virginia Journal of International Law Symposium, Volume 52, Issues 1 and 2. Other posts in this series can be found in the related posts below. Many thanks to Tom Ginsburg and Hootan Shambayati for their thoughtful responses to my Article - "The Perils of Judicial Independence: Constitutional Transition and the Turkish Example." I am in agreement with many of their core points. In his comments, Professor Ginsburg argues that the role of the Turkish judiciary as guardians against democratic reversal of founding ideological commitments “made it inevitable that the courts would either have to soften their stance or suffer corrective political action.” I agree but would like to distinguish my argument about the requirements of judicial accountability in transitional contexts from the more general debate concerning the balance between independence and accountability for courts in democratic systems. In particular, I am not arguing that the elected branches of government should hold the judiciary directly accountable. Nor do I oppose insulating judicial self-governance from partisan politics. Rather, I argue, self-governance mechanisms that are representative of the judiciary as a whole – not exclusively judges from the highest courts – are an understudied but important feature of institutional design in post-authoritarian transitions. More specifically, I argue that the concept of judicial “independence” should include independence from elite capture when transitioning from the rule of the few to the rule of the many. When mechanisms of judicial self-governance – such as judicial councils that govern appointments, promotions and discipline of judges – are dominated by apex courts, they may entrench a self-perpetuating judicial oligarchy that opposes democratic transition. As an example, I trace how the Turkish judicial council was subject to elite capture, maintaining a hierarchical appointments and promotions system that blocked changes to the composition of the judiciary that might reflect the political, social and economic diversity of the underlying society. The result was consistent judicial opposition to reform initiatives introduced by the AKP government. Professor Ginsburg refers to recent cases in which the courts have cracked down on government critics as reflecting a worrying trend. I share his concern about the wave of arrests over the last two years that have been directed against journalists, academics, publishers and graduate students for their political opinions, whether in opposition to the governing AKP party’s policies or in support of Kurdish rights. However, the capacity of the government to use the courts in this way reflects continuities between the AKP and prior Turkish governments rather than an embrace of the Iranian example. The use of counterterrorism powers to suppress freedom of speech and association are sadly a long-standing feature of the Turkish state tradition. The spectacle of a former Turkish Chief of the Army General Staff – Ilker Basbug – being prosecuted for terrorism-related charges is something new in Turkey. But the novelty derives neither from the charges nor the politicized use of the courts. Rather, what is new in the Basbug prosecution is that long-standing mechanisms of state repression once wielded to advance the interests of the Turkish military are now being used to prosecute former military officials.

VJIL Symposium: Tom Ginsburg Comments on “The Perils of Judicial Independence”

[Tom Ginsburg is the Leo Spitz Professor of International Law and Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago Law School.] This post is part of the Virginia Journal of International Law Symposium, Volume 52, Issues 1 and 2. Other posts in this series can be found in the related posts below. In "The Perils of Judicial Independence: Constitutional Transition and...

VJIL Symposium: Dr. Hootan Shambayati Comments on “The Perils of Judicial Independence”

[Dr. Hootan Shambayati is an Assistant Professor, Division of Public Affairs, Florida Gulf Coast University.] This post is part of the Virginia Journal of International Law Symposium, Volume 52, Issues 1 and 2. Other posts in this series can be found in the related posts below. In the wake of the so-called “Arab Spring” of 2011, many commentators from within and without the Arab world have pointed to Turkey as a possible model to guide democratizers in countries like Egypt and Tunisia. Professor Bali’s insightful Article takes this debate a step further by focusing attention on the illiberal nature of the Turkish democracy and raises important questions about judicial independence in a democratizing polity. Professor Bali finds the roots of Turkey’s illiberalism in the institutionalization of the social engineering projects known as Kemalism that were adopted in the early days of the Republic and have continued until the present. The Turkish political system has relied on guardian institutions, particularly the military and the courts, and an illiberal conceptualization of rights to protect the state-centered civilizing mission against opposing societal forces. Professor Bali welcomes the recent AKP initiated judicial reforms as attempts to liberalize the judicial and the political system and dismisses the critiques as self-interested Kemalist elites trying to safeguard their entrenched privileges. More generally, she raises important questions about the balance between judicial independence and accountability and warns against the tendency to equate an independent judiciary with one that protects a liberal conceptualization of rights. Most studies of the Turkish judiciary agree that independence in the Turkish context has created a judicial system that sees its primary role as defending the Kemalist state against the society. But, it is this “illiberalism” that makes the Turkish model attractive to Arab political activists. For the Egyptian or Tunisian political activists the promise of the Turkish model is not the immediate creation of a liberal representative democracy but its potential in transforming the society. For the secular forces, the Turkish model protects them against the Islamists and “tames” political Islam, while for the Islamists, the AKP provides an example of how an Islamist party can gain the reins of power and use the institutions of the state to reshape the society through “democratic” means. Whether this image fits the AKP or not is open to debate. For Professor Bali it does not. Nevertheless, the various shades of Islamism and secularism in the Middle East and their foreign supporters see democracy as a transformative project that aims to reshape the Arab/Muslim societies not represent them. It is this transformative goal of the Middle Eastern democracy that makes the Turkish model appealing.

VJIL Symposium: Introducing Aslı Ü. Bâli’s “The Perils of Judicial Independence”

[Aslı Ü. Bâli is Acting Professor of Law at UCLA School of Law.] This post is part of the Virginia Journal of International Law Symposium, Volume 52, Issues 1 and 2. Other posts in this series can be found in the related posts below. I am grateful to Opinio Juris for the opportunity to discuss my Article - "The Perils of Judicial Independence: Constitutional Transition and the Turkish Example." Here I outline the critique I offer of the "Turkish model" of constitutionalism and the implications of my argument for democratizing transitions such as those currently underway in the Arab world. Democratizing model or cautionary tale? Turkey is sometimes invoked as a potential "model" for democratization in countries like Egypt and Tunisia. This article considers the features of the Turkish legal order that have impeded democratic consolidation. In particular, I analyze the role of the Turkish Constitutional Court and arguments about judicial independence in a series of constitutional crises from 2007 to the present. This focus on courts and constitutions is appropriate, I claim, because of the emphasis placed on "rule of law," constitutionalism and an independent judiciary in the academic literature on democratizing transitions. In the context of the Arab Spring, such prescriptions have served an almost talismanic function – separating, in the eyes of external observers, legitimate calls for democratic change from troubling forms of political upheaval. In Egypt such observers view arguments for managed transition through constitutional reform as appropriate while political transformation through the ballot box is identified with the specter of political Islam. Yet, in the Turkish case, I argue that a strong and independent judiciary and the effort to insulate certain constitutional principles from democratic debate – particularly centered around the meaning of secularism in a Muslim majority country – has served to inhibit democratization and entrench legacies of authoritarianism. Indeed, as a result of the positions taken by traditional political elites through the courts, political Islamists in Turkey have emerged as democratizers and perhaps even (accidental) liberalizers. Redefining judicial independence Based on the Turkish case I argue that institutional design prescriptions for democratic transitions, including those related to judicial independence, should be revisited. In particular, the meaning of "judicial independence" should be understood differently in the context of a transition from minority rule to majority rule (through democratization). At present, judicial independence is conceived primarily in terms of separation of powers; while accompanied by the idea of "checks and balances," the emphasis is on maintaining the autonomy of the courts rather than on subjecting them to political checks. Ran Hirschl has argued that this notion of judicial independence is particularly well suited to enabling authoritarian elites to manage transitional processes. The Turkish conceptions of constitutionalism and judicial independence exemplify the risk that constitutional provisions may serve to insulate elite privileges from democratic reversal through the courts. Through my analysis of recent Turkish constitutional crises – and their origins in institutional legacies from the founding of the republic – I argue that in cases of democratic transition, the best definition of judicial independence would be independence from elite capture rather than independence from the elected branches of government.

VJIL Symposium: Sungjoon Cho Answers to Kelly, Shaffer, and Trachtman

[Sungjoon Cho is currently a Visiting Professor of Law at Northwestern University School of Law. He is also Professor of Law and Norman and Edna Freehling Scholar, Chicago-Kent College of Law.] This post is part of the Virginia Journal of International Law Symposium, Volume 52, Issues 1 and 2. Other posts in this series can be found in the related posts below. First of all, I would like to thank Profs. Shaffer, Trachtman and Kelly for their valuable comments my Article, "Beyond Rationality: A Sociological Construction of the World Trade Organization." I feel fortunate to have these rich and provocative exchanges on this important issue. Let me start my response to their comments by reiterating that I do not intend to question the merits of Profs. Shaffer and Trachtman’s substantive arguments. The authors’ institutional scrutiny is analytically clear, rhetorically powerful, and offers a simple yet powerful heuristic on the WTO and its affairs. My critique centers on their methodological framework, which many International Relations (IR) scholars, such as Robert Keohane and Alex Wendt, would categorize as “rationalism.” Profs. Shaffer and Trachtman basically draw on the “comparative institutional analysis” developed by Neil Komesar, which focuses on the availability of alternative choices in understanding the development of a particular institution. In general, this approach belongs to the school of “new institutional economics” espoused by Douglas North and Oliver Williamson. According to this theory, all institutions are invariably accompanied by transaction costs and therefore can be replaced by alternatives. In the same vein, the WTO is a welfare-maximizing contract within this theoretical framework (Shaffer & Trachtman, p. 111). As the authors might agree, no framework is perfect and rationalism is no exception. Rationalism inevitably leaves some paradigmatic blind spots, which tend to obscure a more complete understanding of the WTO. I maintain that we need to identify those blind spots, and that an alternative framework, such as the one I propose here, could brighten our picture of the WTO. I do not argue for “taking sides.” In fact, I also employed a law and economics methodology in another paper addressing a different issue. Granted, Profs. Shaffer and Trachtman do acknowledge the value of ideational (non-rationalist) parameters, such as “ideas” and “community.” In fact, their mission statement explicitly aims for the exploration of a “law and society” perspective. Nonetheless, their work gives only passing attention to social dynamics. It does not appear that their analysis seriously engages the social, or sociological, aspects of the decision-making process. For example, when they mentioned the “interpretive community” they could have engaged in substantive discussions that involve judicial internalization or the role of interlocutors and norm sponsors. In contrast, those “choices” correspond to consequentialist considerations informed by efficiency concerns. Therefore, it is hard to accept that they view WTO norms as a discursive device powered by the WTO members’ shared understandings or behavioral expectations.