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Liberal concepts of democracy envision courts as key institutions for the promotion and protection of democratic regimes. Yet social science scholarship suggests that courts are fundamentally constrained in ways that undermine their ability to do so. Recognizing these constraints, this book argues that courts can influence regime instability by affecting inter-elite conflict. They do so in three ways: by helping leaders credibly reveal their rationales for policy choices that may appear to violate legal rules; by encouraging leaders to less frequently make decisions that raise concerns about rule violations; and by encouraging the opposition to accept potential rule violations. Courts promote the prudent use of power in each of these approaches. This book evaluates the implications of this argument using a century of global data tracking judicial politics and democratic survival.

Constitutions empower people to ask judges for binding orders directing state agents to remedy rights violations, but state agents do not always comply. Scholars propose that by making it easier to observe noncompliance, courts can leverage public pressure for compliance when it exists. Yet, exposure to information about noncompliance might lead individuals to accept high levels of noncompliance and reduce support for judicial remedies. We estimate the rate of noncompliance with judges' orders via a rigorous tracking study of the Colombiantutela.We then embed this rate in three survey experiments fielded with online national quota samples. We show that people find the noncompliance rate in thetutelahighly unacceptable regardless of a variety of mitigating factors. We also show that public reactions to this information depend on prior expectations, a finding that stresses the importance of scholarship in cognitive psychology for studies of compliance in law and politics.