Decision-making in the Turkish Constitutional Court from the perspective of judicial attitude: An analysis on social and economic rights

Judicial attitude, which can be seen as the main reason for judicial decisions, is a concept that examines the behavior of members of the higher court. In this study, it is aimed to determine the factors affecting the judicial attitude of the Constitutional Court judges which is the highest court in Turkey. The decision-making process of the judges has been tried to be explained through the three basic judicial attitude approaches called legal, attitudinal and strategic models. In the study, in which social and economic rights, which are an important resource in terms of public policies, were chosen as a sample subject, analyzes were made on the norm review decisions of the Constitutional Court judges regarding these rights. In this study, in which the decisions after the 1961 Constitution, in which the Constitutional Court and social and economic rights became constitutional together, were examined, all the decisions between 1962 and 2022 were examined. Quantitative methods have been preferred to determine the factors affecting the outcome of the case in the norm control decisions of the members of the Constitutional Court regarding social and economic rights. With the results of the case chosen as the dependent variable, 'the person who brought the case', 'the right at issue', 'type of case', 'member gender', 'member code', 'vote cast by the member', 'additional/different reason', 'origin of the member' , 'president who appoints the member', 'education', 'president in the decision period', 'decision-period government' and 'presiding court president' were analyzed with the decision tree method, which was schematized using the Phyton 3.9.13 program. As a result of the analyzes made, a significant relationship was found between the decision of the judges and the person or institution that brought the case to the Court, the government of the decision period, the subject of the case, the President of the Court during the decision period and who the members were. Considering these factors affecting the judicial attitude, it was concluded that the Court decided closer to the strategic model in its decisions on social and economic rights.