Estimating judicial ideal points in the Spanish Supreme Court: the case of administrative review

This paper presents an estimation of ideal points for the justices of the Supreme Court of Spain in the specific area of administrative review for the period 2000-2008, controlling for dissent suppression effort. The estimated ideal points allow us to identify political clusters in the Supreme Court which seem inconsistent with the formal and traditional views that a career judiciary is politically not strongly aligned. At the same time, we find evidence that confirms a trend favoring consensus and dissent avoidance.