The Institutional Diversity of Provincial Judicial Powers in Argentina from a Historical Perspective

Abstract

This research presents the historical analysis of the rules and norms that regulate the functioning of the argentine provincial Supreme Courts (such as the tenure system, size of the courts, justice’s constitutional rights, and the appointment and removal system). The objective of this research is to analyze to what extent the institutional design can condition the relationship of the Judiciary branch with the other branches of government. For this purpose it was created a genuine dataset that gathers all the provincial constitutions and rules that were in force between 1983 and 2009. The main finding of this research is that the changes in the intuitional settings have often increased the degree of vulnerability of the Cortes vis-à-vis the other branches of government.