Populists are coming into office in more and more countries around the world. Where we have already witnessed populist governments, we frequently observe attacks on judicial independence. So far, most studies argue that politicians do not undermine judicial independence if support for the judiciary is high since the fear of a public backlash at the ballot box is too high. However, we have rarely seen evidence of this. We test whether this mechanism applies for populists in office. We test whether the likelihood of attacks on the judiciary decreases with an increase in trust in the institution. However, our results show that trust in the judiciary does not condition whether politicians attack the judiciary neither when populists nor when mainstream politicians lead the government. But, our results do confirm assumptions that are often formulated on the basis of anecdotal evidence: Once populists join office, the independence of the judiciary significantly decreases.

Populist parties are on the rise in many countries and their participation in government poses a challenge to high courts. In this paper I study whether the Austrian Constitutional Court uses press releases and public hear ings more often when facing a populist legislator in a judicial review process. Both, public hearings and press releases, increase the likelihood that a decision is covered in the media. This is of particular importance when facing a populist legislator to make sure that the public does not only hear the populist’s side of the story, but also the court’s. The results show that facing a populist legislator increases the court’s likelihood to hold public hearings, but not to issue press releases. This is in line with research that has shown that public hearings have a larger impact on court coverage in the media.