President Rafael Correa oversaw a total rewrite of the Ecuadorian Constitution during his 2007-2017 tenure. Part of these reforms included creating a new branch of government—the Transparency Branch—that would oversee the appointment of most authorities relevant to the judiciary, including the Qualifying Commission which facilitates the appointment of judges the Constitutional Court.  In 2011, President Correa also created a Council of the Judiciary, which worked to improve the efficiency of the judiciary by building new buildings, implementing electronic management systems, training thousands of new officials, and adding nearly 600 judges to the judiciary.  When President Lenin Moreno took office, he altered several aspects of President Moreno’s prior reforms in an effort to distance the executive branch from the judiciary. For example, out of concern that executive branch tracking of the efficiency of the judiciary violated judicial independence, reforms limited the Council of the Judiciary’s review of judges’ case closure rates to once every ten years. Reforms also made it more difficult to remove judges.