Judges and Institutional Bias: The Question of Relationality in World Politics

• In Event: Poster Session: International Collaboration & Canadian Politics
  In Poster Session: Poster Session: International Collaboration

Abstract

Judges and institutional bias: the question of relationality in world politics
Domestic and International judges are social actors. As such, they network to spread their legal decisions at global level, contributing to reimagination in democratic context. To explore these interconnections and hubs, this paper argues that both directions in the formation of hubs are essential for understanding these actors as part of relationality in IR. Judges have been considered by part of the International Relations scholarship as diplomats in robes. However, the effects that derive from these networks and exchange of knowledge produce an impact that goes beyond courts’ decision-making. Institutional biases arise creating an interactive effect that modifies domestic institutions, international institutions, and produce an indirect effect in society. Putting relations between unexpected international actors – such as judges – at the core of the international politics debate, questions previous theoretical assumptions of that states are the unit analysis while analyzing world politics. The paper offers a framework, theory, and action on how institutional bias of domestic and international courts takes place in Latin America and Africa to disentangle the effects of individual actors and networks in the places where institutions are arranged according to a Two-Level game.

Author

• Caroline de Lima e Silva, University Diego Portales