Dominican Republic and Haiti: Country Studies

Dominican Republic: Government and Politics
allies, or as a result of genuine policy or ideological differences.
The PRD governments were especially frustrated by factions
within their own parties, although they also faced opposition
from the PRSC and PLD representatives. President Fernandez,
in turn, has been confronted particularly with opposition from
the PRD, especially after it gained congressional seats in the
1998 election.
The Judiciary
Judicial power is exercised by the Supreme Court ofJustice
and by other courts created by the constitution and by law. The
country has general courts, which consider civil, criminal, commercial,
and labor issues (except for labor matters in the major
urban areas of Santo Domingo, Santiago, San Francisco de
Macoris, and San Pedro de Macons) , and certain specialized
courts, namely land courts, labor courts (in the country's four
major urban areas), tax courts, and new children's courts that
were mandated by a 1994 law. The country also has other
courts or offices with judicial functions, which do not form a
part of the judicial branch. These include the Police Tribunal,
the Military Tribunal, and the Central Electoral Board, which
administers elections and is the unappealable arbiter of all disputes
related to elections, with complaints being heard in the
first instance by municipal electoral boards.
Under the Supreme Court there are nine Courts of Appeals,
which hear appeals of decisions from Courts of First Instance.
There are eighty-three of these Courts of First Instance, which,
unlike the Supreme Court or the Appeals Courts, are presided
over by only one judge. There are also 214justices of the peace,
who hear cases of small claims or minor crimes. In addition,
there are also four Labor Courts of Appeal, and single Courts
of Appeal for tax and for land issues; under these are the
respective specialized courts of first instance.
Centralized and hierarchical, the Dominican legal system is
patterned after the French system; its basic codes for criminal
and civil procedure date back to 1884. The legal system has
employed a code-law legal system rather than a common law
system such as the one used in the United States. Detailed and
comprehensive, the codes leave little room for United Statesstyle
judicial activism or citation of precedent. Legal reasoning
is deductive (from the codes) , rather than inductive or based
on past cases.
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