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Judicial Independence: Evidence from the Philippine Supreme Court (1970–2003)

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Book cover The Political Economy of Governance

Part of the book series: Studies in Political Economy ((POEC))

Abstract

Is the Philippine Supreme Court independent from the Executive branch? Using data from Haynie et al.’s (High courts judicial database version 1.2, 2007) High Courts Judicial Database, I compare how each of the ten Chief Justices from 1970 to 2003 decides cases involving the national government 2 years prior and 2 years after their appointment as Chief Justice, in a difference-in-differences framework. To verify whether differences could be due to selection bias from the possible non-random assignment of cases and strategic timing of decisions, I also verify whether panels that did not include the Chief Justice exhibit differences in behavior during the same 4-year time periods. I find that they do not. In contrast, it is only the panels that include the Chief Justice which show some significant differences in the probability of favoring the government in its decisions pre- and post-appointment of the Chief Justice.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    I conducted preliminary analyses with Janica Magat who reports some findings in Magat (2013). I also thank John Ahlquist, Nils Ringe, Scott Gehlbach, Barry Burden, Emily Sellars, Galina Belokurova, Delgerjargal Uvsh, Peter Nasuti, Diane Desierto, Lee Benham, Alexandra Benham, Mary Shirley, and participants in the 2014 ISNIE annual conference for valuable comments and suggestions.

  2. 2.

    See, for instance, Kim (2011) and Zajc and Kovac (2011) for a summary.

  3. 3.

    In certain cases, the relevant constraints may be the lack of resources. Galanter (1974,1995) and Atkins (1991), for instance, put forth a “party capability” hypothesis, whereby judges may appear to rule in favor of powerful parties like the government, but this could be because the latter, having more resources to spend on legitimate activities, e.g. hiring better lawyers, could actually build more meritorious cases.

  4. 4.

    See, e.g., Cohen (1992) and Taha (2004) for the USA, Ramseyer and Rasmusen (1997) for Japan, Smyth (2004) for the UK and New Zealand, and Schneider (2005) and Choi and Gulati (2004a,b) for Germany.

  5. 5.

    The other members are a representative of the Integrated Bar, a law professor, and a representative of the private sector.

  6. 6.

    See, e.g., Bernas (2007) and Desierto (2009) for an analysis.

  7. 7.

    I use CJ appointment, rather than appointment to the SC, since the pool of SC Associate Justices from which the CJ is typically selected is likely to be more homogeneous than the larger set of Philippine lawyers who can be appointed Associate Justices of the SC.

  8. 8.

    Certain cases are decided en banc, that is, by all fifteen justices of the SC, in which case one ponente is randomly assigned whose responsibility is to argue the case before the other members.

  9. 9.

    The HCJD contains encoded data describing the content of decisions produced by Supreme or High Courts of several countries over multiple years, and the data for the Philippines come from 3,409 decisions reported in that country’s Supreme Court Reports Annotated (SCRA)—approximately 100 cases per year in the period 1970–2003—that were randomly chosen by Haynie et al.

  10. 10.

    Note that deciding in favor of the respondent in a case means ruling against the corresponding appellant. Since the dependent variable takes on 1 if the “CJ” votes in favor of the respondent, we can then interpret the predicted probability to be the predicted probability of disfavoring the appellant. Equations (5) and (6) consider cases in which the government is the appellant.

  11. 11.

    As further robustness check, Eq. (2) is also estimated for CJs Fernan, Narvasa, and Davide using “placebo” periods more than 2 years after the latter were appointed CJ and before the next CJ is appointed. Specifically, for CJ Fernan, I consider the period July 1, 1990 to Dec. 7, 1991 and where postFernan = 1 if the case was decided after Dec. 31, 1990. For CJ Narvasa, I consider the period Dec. 8, 1993 to Dec. 8, 1997, and let postNarvasa = 1 for cases decided after Dec. 8, 1995. Lastly, for CJ Davide, I consider the period Nov. 30, 2000 to Nov. 28, 2003 (the last period in the sample), and let postDavide = 1 for cases decided after May 30, 2001. I find no significant differences in the way CJs Fernan and Davide decide cases involving the government relative to other cases between the pre- and post-CJ periods. However, for CJ Narvasa, the estimated coefficient for govtresp ∗ postNarvasa of − 0. 320 is statistically significant at 5 %.

  12. 12.

    The difference in the probability for government cases and the probability for non-government cases is computed by taking the difference in the predicted probability when either govtresp or govtappel = 1 and the predicted probability when either govtresp or govtappel = 0, respectively. The left bars are such difference when post “ CJ” = 0, while the right bars are when post “ CJ” = 1. I treat as zero all estimated coefficients that are statistically insignificant. Lastly, for all these bars in the figures, I set publiclaw = 1 and, hence, privateeconrel, torts, familyestates, constiss = 0.

  13. 13.

    This trend seems plausible since overall, Narvasa tended to decide against government cases more than he did against non-government cases and, hence, favoritism before appointment is less conspicuous.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Political Science, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1050 Bascom Mall, Madison, WI, 53706, USA

    Desiree A. Desierto

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Correspondence to Desiree A. Desierto .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Political Science, Washington University in Saint Louis, Saint Louis, Missouri, USA

    Norman Schofield

  2. Faculty of Economics, University of Vigo, Vigo, Spain

    Gonzalo Caballero

Appendix

Appendix

Summary statistics

    Variable |       Obs        Mean    Std. Dev.       Min        Max

-------------+--------------------------------------------------------

   favorresp |      3409    .4916398    .5000034          0          1

Makalin1in~r |      1895    .1208443    .3260323          0          1

Castro1inf~r |      1895    .1218997    .3272563          0          1

Fernand1in~r |      1895    .2216359     .415457          0          1

Makasia1in~r |      1895     .223219    .4165139          0          1

-------------+--------------------------------------------------------

Aquino1inf~r |      1895    .1905013    .3928002          0          1

Teehank1in~r |      1895    .2168865    .4122335          0          1

 Yap1infavor |      1895    .0005277    .0229718          0          1

Fernan1inf~r |      1895    .0131926    .1141291          0          1

Narvasa1in~r |      1895    .0422164    .2011355          0          1

-------------+--------------------------------------------------------

Davide1inf~r |      1895    .0490765    .2160848          0          1

   Variable |       Obs        Mean    Std. Dev.       Min        Max

-------------+--------------------------------------------------------

    govtresp |      3171     .397351    .4894269          0          1

   govtappel |      3377    .0775837    .2675549          0          1

postMak~ntal |       408    .5196078    .5002288          0          1

  postCastro |       408          .5    .5006139          0          1

postFernando |       416    .4759615    .5000232          0          1

-------------+--------------------------------------------------------

postMakasiar |       392    .4872449    .5004761          0          1

  postAquino |       395    .4708861    .4997847          0          1

postTeehan~e |       375        .536    .4993686          0          1

     postYap |       415    .4915663    .5005323          0          1

  postFernan |       422    .4668246    .4994903          0          1

-------------+--------------------------------------------------------

 postNarvasa |       397     .488665    .5005023          0          1

  postDavide |       405    .5135802    .5004337          0          1

      postCJ |      2417    .6156392    .4865445          0          1

    Variable |       Obs        Mean    Std. Dev.       Min        Max

-------------+--------------------------------------------------------

specialcourt |      3409    .2100323     .407391          0          1

  corruption |      3409    .0155471     .123733          0          1

   publiclaw |      3409    .5092402    .4999879          0          1

privateeco~l |      3409    .3376357     .472973          0          1

       torts |      3409    .0293341    .1687661          0          1

-------------+--------------------------------------------------------

familyesta~s |      3409    .0316808    .1751747          0          1

    constiss |      3408     .038439    .1938022          0          2

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Desierto, D.A. (2015). Judicial Independence: Evidence from the Philippine Supreme Court (1970–2003). In: Schofield, N., Caballero, G. (eds) The Political Economy of Governance. Studies in Political Economy. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-15551-7_3

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