Independent Prosecutors

Do Independent Prosecutors Deter Political Corruption? An Empirical Evaluation across Seventy-eight Countries

Anne van Aaken, Lars P. Feld and Stefan Voigt

It is hypothesized that prosecution agencies that are dependent on the executive have less incentives to prosecute crimes committed by government members that in turn increases their incentives to commit such crimes. Here, this hypothesis is put to an empirical test focusing on a particular kind of crime, namely corruption. In order to test it, it was necessary to create an indicator measuring de jure as well as de facto independence of the prosecution agencies. The regressions show that de facto independence of prosecution agencies robustly reduces corruption of officials.

Judicial Nomination

The story of federal judges in the NYTimes: The Obama administration is in the process of nominating judges for federal district and US Courts of Appeals. So far it has nominated 26 judges. The senate has confirmed only 4 of them.

The bush administration moved aggressively in nominating federal judges. The Senate then helped it to confirm some extremist nominees.

Now Obama should act as quickly as possible to change the direction, and to fill judicial vacancies with moderate judges.

This part of the NYTimes article shows that the Senate played a game to force the White Hose to avoid the nomination of  “inappropriate” judges:

“There is a good chance the Senate will vote on Judge Hamilton this week. Republicans who oppose him may be trying to send a message that even moderate nominees will have a rough time so the White House should steer clear of more controversial choices.”