A central question in development economics is whether there are adequate checks and balances on the executive. This paper provides causal evidence on how increasing constraints on the executive, through the removal of Presidential discretion in judicial appointments, promotes the rule of law....

We computationally reproduce the central findings in Mehmood (2022), which studied the effect of a 2010 reform in Pakistan replacing the presidential appointment of high-court judges with peer appointments. Mehmood leveraged judicial records interpreted and coded by lawyers in Pakistan at the...