Judicial Anti Corruption Campaigns As Quests For Judicial Reputation

Why do some countries prosecute political corruption while others do not? The studies of judicial systems seem to place the answer to that question within the realm of the quality of judicial independence and the quality of judicial institutions designed to protect judicial independence. While useful, this explanation does not tell us why some countries in which the same or a very similar system of judicial independence or similar or comparable levels of corruption exist behave in different ways. Often it is said that the questions of the political will to tackle corruption is what precludes such developments in these countries, and it is highlighted that, in any event, the prosecution of political corruption does not necessarily lead to lower levels of corruption. The latter implies that the study of the prosecution of political corruption is less important as it is also less efficient than the preventive measures and the legislative frameworks that prevent or make corruption less likely.However, massive and systemic prosecutions of political corruption happen even in corrupt settings. The three largest anticorruption campaigns led by the judiciary which occurred in Italy, Brazil, and Romania have happened in the ambient of widespread political corruption, in which the most prominent members of the legislative and executive branches of government in those countries were involved. Moreover, they happened despite the absence of the political will to tackle corruption. These campaigns have been explained in the literature dealing with judicial systems as instances of judicial revolutions, anticorruption crusades, prosecutorial overreach, consequences of judicial independence, neoliberalism-fueled activities of the legal professionals, or politically motivated prosecutions. Also, comparisons between the three have been drawn, in particular between the Italian and Brazilian campaigns.While I agree with the authors that the campaigns have much in common in terms of their emergence, development, and result, as well as that they produced significant challenges to the overall balance between the branches of government within the countries, I feel they have been underexplored from a theoretical standpoint.Motivated by a desire to fill this gap and inspired by the approach of professors Garoupa and Ginsburg to the matter of judicial reputation, I treat these campaigns in this paper as quests for judicial reputation.