On April 20th, the series International Dialogues in Constitutional Law hosted Julio Rios-Figueroa, political scientist specialized in constitutional courts and Professor of the Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas (CIDE, Mexico). Rios-Figueroa approached the topic of “Constitutional courts and democratic conflict solving”, based on his recently published book by the Cambridge University Press. In his research, he discusses the role of constitutional courts in the legal understandings of civilian-military relationships within the democratic governments of Colombia, Mexico, and Peru. Based on extensive empirical evidence, he argues that when constitutional courts are independent, accessible, and have broad constitutional review powers, they better fulfill their role as ‘mediators’ of the confrontational governmental relationships with the armed forces. Unlike ‘arbitrators’, that solve distributive conflicts and generate winners and losers, ‘mediators’ are more effective in stabilizing those relations.
