ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to explore to what extent institutional rules can facilitate or constrain judicial turnover. The fact that the Argentine provinces are autonomous and retain all the power that was not specifically entrusted to the national government allows them to dictate their own constitutions. This is precisely the reason for exploring how different institutional rules influence the stability of the justices on the bench. This chapter uses original data collected from the provincial constitutions, as well as other laws and regulations related to the functioning of the local supreme courts since 1983. The analysis of the 54 provincial constitutions suggests that there is great heterogeneity regarding institutional design in the provincial judiciaries. The findings in this chapter provide evidence to support the theory. First, the model reveals that political factors, rather than institutional rules, play a central role in accounting for judicial instability. Having life tenure is the only institutional rule that matters in accounting for judicial instability, whereas rules regarding appointment and removal processes do not. Second, it was demonstrated that changes in the institutional rules, rather than the rules themselves, help account for judicial turnover on the bench; which suggests that governors have triggered both institutional and non-institutional mechanisms of vacancy creation to manipulate the composition of the court.
