Reproducibility package for The Path Forward To Effective Reform: A Global Report On Justice

This report introduces the Database of Court Reform, a global repository documenting 1,887 attempted court reforms across 189 countries from 2000–2025, yielding over 15,000 data points. Designed as an operational tool for the World Bank Group and other development partners, the database consolidates detailed information on reform content and sequencing, enabling practitioners to benchmark national reform trajectories against global and regional peers, identify common strategies to improve access, efficiency, and quality, and tailor interventions to institutional contexts.
The report’s main contribution is an empirical analysis of court reform processes and the actionable policy recommendations derived from this evidence. It addresses longstanding gaps—fragmented information, political resistance, and resource constraints—by offering a systematic, cross-country view of who reforms, what they target, and when reforms enter into force. The database records key features of each attempted reform (including precipitating events, political actors, timing, and scope) and focuses on whether reforms were approved and entered into force, without assessing implementation or outcomes. This unified evidence base supports the design of politically feasible and technically sound reform strategies.
Additionally, the report presents a novel cross-country dataset on judicial selection to courts of last instance as a proxy for judicial independence. By documenting nominating and appointing authorities and the number of branches involved, it reveals salient variation in executive, legislative, and judicial influence with implications for the independence of top courts.