New Report Examines Regulation of Lobbying Activities in the Judicial Branch

According to an OECD report, courts “are frequently asked to determine public policy outcomes in policy areas such as constitutional rights protections, trade, and commerce, national security, labour or environmental protection.” Consequently, the judiciary branch, like other branches of government, “can be subject to lobbying strategies concerning decisions with major societal impact… [which] can also try to target the appointment of judges to secure specific judicial outcomes that advantage the interests represented.”

A recently published Law Library of Congress report, Regulation of lobbying activities in the judicial branch: Austria, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Estonia, Slovakia, Slovenia, provides results of a survey that included the laws of the following 38 jurisdictions: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Croatia, Czechia, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Israel, Japan, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxenberg, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Peru, Poland,  Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. The report includes a table containing information and citations of relevant legislation, as well as individual country surveys discussing the various legal measures that have been either adopted or are pending regarding attempts to influence courts outside of specific cases.

Among the jurisdictions surveyed, Austria, Chile, Estonia, Slovakia, and Slovenia appear to specifically regulate lobbying directed at the judicial branch. A bill regulating the practice of lobbying before public agents from the three branches, including the judiciary, was approved by the Brazilian Chamber of Deputies on November 29, 2022, and forwarded to the Brazilian Federal Senate for analysis and debate. A bill introduced in Colombia in 2021, proposed to regulate lobbying. This bill would expressly prohibit lobbying within the judicial branch.

To find out more, we invite you to review our report. This report is part of the Law Library’s Legal Reports collection, prepared by staff and foreign law specialists from the Global Legal Research Directorate. The collection includes over 4,000 historical and contemporary legal reports on a variety of legal subjects.

Read the report here.

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