An accessible, swift and unbiased legal system may constrain the executive by limiting expropriation and the misuse of public office for private gain. I test this hypothesis by assembling a database of judicial reforms supported by foreign aid. To address the endogenous placement of these reforms, I implement a within-country identification strategy comparing groups more or less connected to the executive. I find that judicial reforms disproportionately benefit the powerless and discriminated groups of society. Their perception that the president will never ignore the courts and laws is lower at baseline by 11 percentage points compared to other more connected groups in society, and it differentially increases by 10 percentage points after a judicial reform, nearly closing the gap between groups.

容易获得，迅速且公正的法律制度可能会通过限制征用和滥用公职谋取私利来限制行政人员。我通过组装一个由外国援助支持的司法改革数据库来检验这一假设。为了解决这些改革的内源性问题，我实施了一个国家内部的识别策略，比较或多或少与执行官有联系的群体。我发现，司法改革对无权和受歧视的社会群体的好处不成比例。与社会上其他联系程度更高的群体相比，他们对总统永远不会无视法院和法律的看法比基线降低了11个百分点，而在司法改革后，总统的差别增加了10个百分点，几乎弥合了群体之间的鸿沟。