The Costa Rican Supreme Court's compliance monitoring system

In the summer of 2009, the Constitutional Chamber of the Supreme Court of Costa Rica began monitoring compliance with its direct orders in amparo and habeas corpus cases. The court announced the early results from its analysis at a well-attended March 2010 press conference. The president of the court promised to continue monitoring and publicizing the results for the foreseeable future. We use a unique data set on compliance derived from this monitoring system to evaluate theoretical claims about the relationship between the transparency of judicial orders and compliance. We observe that vague orders, and orders issued without definite time frames for compliance, were associated with delayed implementation. We also find that orders issued after the press conference were implemented roughly two months earlier than orders issued just prior to the press conference.