Venezuela: Judicial Independence Under Siege

Human Rights Watch issued a 24-page report in 2004 titled, “Rigging the Rule of Law: Judicial Independence Under Siege in Venezuela.” It highlights how the Venezuelan government compromised the autonomy of the country’s judiciary with a court-packing law that amounted to a political takeover of the Supreme Court.

The law made judges more vulnerable to political persecution and was an effort to ensure that legal controversies surrounding the presidential recall referendum would be resolved in favor of Chávez. The new law expanded the Supreme Court from 20 to 32 members and gave a majority of seats on the Supreme Court to Chávez’s governing coalition. The law also gave the governing coalition the power to nullify existing judges’ appointments to the bench. The threat to the judiciary’s independence in 2004 was particularly disconcerting given the volatile political situation surrounding the recall referendum where the country’s National Electoral Council disqualified hundreds of thousands of signatures on a petition to authorize the referendum.

The report is interesting because it highlights how Chávez and his governing coalition attempted to use the judiciary as an extension of its political agenda and a means to retain control rather than allow it to serve as an independent check on executive and legislative power. Human Rights Watch recommended that the OAS monitor the situation and analyze threats to Venezuela’s democratic political institutional process.

http://hrw.org/english/docs/2004/06/17/venezu8855.htm