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A growing global trend of judicializing environmental policy has been received with optimism, and in the context of democracies in transition, many have found in an active Supreme Court a potential solution to political impasses. However, as the judiciary is the least democratic of the three branches of government, what impact does judicialization have on democratic accountability? We claim that judicialization generates accountability losses in two ways. First, theoretically, when the Court takes on managerial functions that extend beyond its adjudicative role, it distorts its horizontal accountability functions. Second, empirically, when the Court becomes involved in policy formulation, effectiveness is not guaranteed yet there are no vertical accountability sanctions the polity can impose on judges. We illustrate this argument with an emblematic and instructive case of judicialization of environmental policy in Argentina. We conclude that judicialization to remedy policy failures undermines democratic accountability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Specific legislation in Argentina followed in the wake of the 1992 Earth Summit, with increased citizen awareness and growing academic concern from various philosophical perspectives. The current lines of research of the main work groups include (a) interdisciplinary work on environmental ethics and global environmental justice focused on natural resources and ecosystems, (b) the ecologically appropriate roots of the cultural heritage of Western civilization, and (c) gestalt ontology, deep ecology, and ecosophy. The emergence of ecophilosophy has required environmental education to go beyond mere ecological training to include an understanding of the philosophical implications of managing and living with concerns for the environment. Interdisciplinary research has become a steadily growing and promising field that has brought together scholars from natural science, economics, anthropology .philosophy, and social science. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]