The thought of judicial institutions in authoritarian states typically conjures up the image of state security courts with no standards of due process, handpicked judges lacking any degree of independence, and little hope for any measure of justice. We picture the bright lights on the defendant during his interrogation, or the young man from the film Midnight Express who is held in a Turkish prison without recourse to the law. In the academic literature, too, there is a strong assumption that authoritarian regimes either have no use for law and legal institutions or that law is applied instrumentally with courts acting as faithful agents of the regime. These assumptions are reflected in and reinforced by the new wave of comparative law scholarship that is focused almost exclusively on judicial politics in democratic or democratizing states.

This chapter challenges the conventional wisdom that democracy is a necessary prerequisite for a judicialization of politics. The Egyptian case and comparisons with Brazil (1964–1985), Chile (1973–1990), China (1990–present), Indonesia (1986–1998), Mexico (1926–2000), the Philippines (1972–1986), Franco's Spain (1936–1975), and other countries illustrate why and how regimes use courts to institutionalize their rule. The cases highlight a series of pathologies common to many authoritarian states that courts are often deployed to ameliorate. In some cases, courts were empowered to encourage investment. In others, they were created to strengthen administrative discipline within the state's own bureaucratic machinery. Still other regimes designed courts to arbitrate between factions within the ruling coalition.