Judicial Independence and Human Rights in Autocracies ∗ Mehdi Shadmehr † Raphael Boleslavsky ‡ Tom Ginsburg § Abstract Why do some autocracies empower their judiciaries to uphold human rights even though independent judiciaries can prevent the repression of opposition? We develop a theoretical framework to explain why dictatorships benefit from judiciaries that restrict the government’s use of coercion, thereby addressing the contradiction between the function of independent judi- ciaries and their institutional origins. By granting a degree of judicial independence, the regime shapes how the public views the state’s use of coercion. When the judiciary is more effective in preventing state repression, the public will have more confidence in the legitimacy of coercive acts that are not blocked by the judiciary. This shifts public opinion against the opposition in fa- vor of the regime, reducing the public’s incentive to support the opposition. Unlike propaganda and censorship that directly control the information that citizens receive, partially independent judiciaries enable autocracies to control how the public processes the informational content of coercion. Keywords: Judicial Independence, Human Rights, Autocracy, Repression, Protest, Legitimate Coercion Word Count: 9780 * This paper is the second part of a larger project with the title, “Institutions, Repression, and the Spread of Protest.” We wish to thank Nemanja Antic, Dan Bernhardt, Brandice Canes-Wrone, Odilon Cˆ amara, Charles Cameron, Christopher Cotton, Georgy Egorov, Ignacio Esponda, Justin Fox, Camilo Garcia-Jimeno, Soroush Ghazi, Sergei Guriev, Arvind Magesan, Adam Meirowitz, Steve Morris, Michael Peress, Nicola Persico, Andrea Prat, Carlo Prato, Kristopher Ramsay, Luis Rayo, Kevin Reffett, Kai Steverson, Milan Svolik, Scott Tyson, Dan Treisman, L´ eonard Wantch´ ekon, and participants and discussants at EEA-ESEM, SIOE, APSA, MPSA, SPSA, and Miami Economic Theory conferences, and seminar audiences at the University of Utah, NYU-Abu Dhabi, FIU, Washington University, and Princeton. † Harris School of Public Policy, University of Chicago, and Department of Economics, University of Calgary. E-mail: mehdi@uchicago.edu ‡ Department of Economics, University of Miami. E-mail: r.boleslavsky@miami.edu § University of Chicago Law School. E-mail: tginsburg@uchicago.edu