Practice: national-level judges give reasons for their decisions

QoG code: aii_q04

Sub-score (0-100). Question no. 4. In practice, national-level judges give reasons for their decisions/judgments.

A 100 score is earned where all the following conditions are met:
1) judges routinely provide formal reasoning for their rulings,
2) their reasoning references the laws/jurisprudence they considered and the specific interpretation they gave them in relation to the case, and
3) their reasoning is public (for this indicator, national security exceptions are allowed).

A 50 score is earned where any of the following conditions apply:
1) judges occasionally fail to provide formal reasoning for their decisions,
2) the reasoning occasionally lacks references to the laws/jurisprudence considered or the respective judges' interpretations, or
3) it takes more than two weeks for citizens to obtain the reasoning after request.

A 0 score is earned where at least one of the following conditions apply:
1) judges rarely provide formal reasoning for their rulings, or
2) their reasoning rarely references the laws/jurisprudence they considered and/or the specific interpretations they gave them in relation to the case, or
3) the reasoning is not public.

Type of variable
Continuous
Downloaded by QoG on
2025-09-25
Last updated by source
2024-05-28

Categories

Judicial
Details of this variable in our compilation datasets
Dataset No. Countries
Standard cross-section 53
Standard time-series 53
Dataset Available for years
Standard time-series 2013-2023

Country coverage

Click here to see the full list of countries
  • Algeria
  • Angola
  • Benin
  • Botswana
  • Burkina Faso
  • Burundi
  • Cameroon
  • Cape Verde
  • Central African Republic
  • Chad
  • Comoros
  • Congo
  • Congo, Democratic Republic
  • Cote d'Ivoire
  • Djibouti
  • Egypt
  • Equatorial Guinea
  • Eritrea
  • Eswatini (former Swaziland)
  • Ethiopia (1993-)
  • Gabon
  • Gambia
  • Ghana
  • Guinea
  • Guinea-Bissau
  • Kenya
  • Lesotho
  • Liberia
  • Libya
  • Madagascar
  • Malawi
  • Mali
  • Mauritania
  • Mauritius
  • Morocco
  • Mozambique
  • Namibia
  • Niger
  • Nigeria
  • Rwanda
  • Sao Tome and Principe
  • Senegal
  • Seychelles
  • Sierra Leone
  • Somalia
  • South Africa
  • South Sudan
  • Tanzania
  • Togo
  • Tunisia
  • Uganda
  • Zambia
  • Zimbabwe

Year coverage

This variable has information from 2013 to 2023.