Publication details
Court-Unpacking: A Preliminary Inquiry
| Authors | |
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| Year of publication | 2023 |
| Type | Chapter of a book |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
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| Description | The proliferation of court-packing wars across different political regimes has recently stirred up a lot of controversy. As one of the techniques allowing executive actors swiftly to capture the courts, align them with their own political preferences or even weaponise them against their opponents, court-packing is particularly tempting for both democratic and autocratic leaders. The legitimacy of court-packing and potential safeguards against this method have therefore triggered vibrant academic debate. Yet, much less attention has been paid to a vexing question: what to do with packed courts once the political actors who staffed them with loyal or ideologically aligned judges lose power. Can courts be unpacked? If so, how? Is unpacking always legitimate or does it depend on the legitimacy of previous court-packing? Should the content of decision-making, judicial behaviour or the personal independence and integrity of packed judges be considered in a normative assessment of unpacking? And what role does eventual redress for removed judges play in these considerations? Addressing these questions, this chapter analyses the normative underpinnings of unpacking in the broader context of democratic decay and abusive constitutionalism |
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