Independence of the Judiciary in Costa Rica

here’s a link to an exert from the 2007 Global Corruption Report. It has a great section about Costa Rica’s judicial independence on page 190: http://books.google.com/books?id=A8S6Yd047LcC&pg=PA190&lpg=PA190&dq=judiciary+in+costa+rica&source=web&ots=LQ6dG-9X8s&sig=5IEgCcg45EO0f4TpnCqZo0AeP9o

As you might expect, Costa Rica again ranks highly in Latin America for judicial independence. However, you might be interested in why…

In the constitution, all modifications to the judiciary must be passed by a 2/3rds legislative super majority. For instance, judges cannot be suspended without this super majority. Case loads for judges and prosecutors are low in Costa Rica compared with other Latin American countries.  However, perhaps what is more important is what the legislature cannot vote upon. At least 6% of the government’s budget is constitutionally guaranteed to the judiciary. Therefore the judicary’s budget is not subject to many outside sources of political influence. There is also a constitutionally created, separate branch of the judiciary which hears corruption cases exclusively. This branch is accountable only to the supreme court and is mandated to hear all corruption cases from felonies to simple tax evasion charges. All of these qualities create a rigid structure unfriendly to the undue influence by the legislature and the presidency or corrupt interests.

On the broader topic of corruption Costa Rica rank well by Transparency International’s standards. This is due to a wide variety of structural factors that lead to few entrenched corrupt interests in the judiciary (some of which are discussed in the preceeding paragraph). However, the Costa Rican political structure has also been flexible enough make reforms in problem areas. Importantly since the 1990’s Costa Rica has created at digital case log. This has greatly increased transparency and allowed for public scrutiny, making corruption more difficult.

If your interested in knowing more check out the link: (the last link I posted didn’t work perfectly for some people so if you have trouble you can google “Global Corruption Report 2007 Costa Rica” and the 7th link to pop up should be a complete PDF of the report published by Transparency International).