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Professor Erin Delaney co-edits symposium on chief justices and democratic resilience.
26 June 2025
A symposium on chief justices and democratic resilience, edited by GCDC Director Erin Delaney, along with Rosalind Dixon and David Kosař, has been published in the International Journal of Constitutional Law. In the introduction to the symposium, titled ‘Chief Justices and Democratic Resilience: Judicial Leadership in Times of Constitutional Crisis’, the editors provide an overview of a chief justice’s role, including the types of powers he or she might wield – jurisprudential, administrative, and representational – and the factors affecting the use of these powers during constitutional crises.
The introduction is followed by eight substantive articles covering various jurisdictions. Rehan Abeyratne and Surbhi Karwa examine the office of the Chief Justice of India in the first article, showing how it has accelerated the illiberal agenda of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The second article sees Yaniv Roznai and Shani Schnitzer outline the strategies Esther Hayut used to ensure adherence to the rule of law and democracy during her tenure as President of the Supreme Court of Israel. In the third article, Theunis Roux and Sinethemba Memela discuss how Mogoeng Mogoeng’s religious and political views, combined with the institutional authority of the Constitutional Court, contributed to his success as Chief Justice of South Africa.
The next article explores the Mexican context, as Andrea Pozas-Loyo and Julio Ríos-Figueroa argue that chief justices with “insider” status – i.e., closer ties to the judiciary – have greater capacity to protect the institution from co-optation by the executive. Meanwhile, Victoria Miyandazi and Duncan M Okubasu use the tenures of Kenya’s first three chief justices post-2010 to highlight the factors affecting judicial efficacy in hybrid regimes. The sixth article focuses on institutional design, as Daniel Bogéa and Lívia Guimarães discuss how the rotational model of selecting chief justices in Brazil shapes the actions of the chief justices in periods of democratic backsliding.
In the seventh article, David Kosař and Katarína Šipulová use three case studies – Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia – to highlight the interplay between chief justices’ embeddedness in transnational networks and their ability to resist attacks on judicial independence. Finally, Julius Yam and Cora Chan analyse the oratory approaches of the three chief justices in post-handover Hong Kong in response to constitutional problems.
The full symposium is available to read on the I*CON website. It is dedicated to the memory of Dr Julius Yam, an exceptional scholar and cherished colleague and friend.