Hualing Fu, “Building Judicial Integrity in China.” Hastings Int’l & Comp. L. Rev, vol. 39, no. 1 (2016): 167-181. Summary: Since the late 1970s, the Chinese judiciary has undergone a continuous reform process of professionalization and institutionalization. Despite the political constraints, there are sufficient opportunities and incentives to continue China’s judicial reform so as to enhance …
Lisa Hilbink, Judges beyond Politics in Democracy and Dictatorship: Lessons from Chile. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. Summary: Why did formerly independent Chilean judges, trained under and appointed by democratic governments, facilitate and condone the illiberal, antidemocratic, and anti-legal policies of the Pinochet regime? Challenging the assumption that adjudication in non-democratic settings is fundamentally different and …
Hans Petter Graver, Judges Against Justice: On Judges When the Rule of Law is Under Attack. New York City: Springer, 2014. Summary: This book explores concrete situations in which judges are faced with a legislature and an executive that consciously and systematically discard the ideals of the rule of law. It revolves around three basic questions: …
Tom Ginsburg. “Administrative Law and the Judicial Control of Agents in Authoritarian Regimes,” in The Politics of Courts in Authoritarian Regimes. Edited by Tom Ginsburg and Tamir Moustafa, pp. 58-72. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008. Summary: One reason that dictators empower courts is to monitor and discipline lower-level administrative agents. This chapter applies a version of …
Nick Cheesman, “How an Authoritarian Regime in Burma Used Special Courts to Defeat Judicial Independence.” Law & Society Review, vol. 45, no. 4 (2011): 801–30. Summary: Why do authoritarian rulers establish special courts? One view is that they do so to insulate the judiciary from politically oriented cases and allow it continued, albeit limited, independence. …
Rachel E Bowen, “Judicial Autonomy in Central America: A Typological Approach.” Political Research Quarterly, vol. 66, no. 4 (2013): 831–42. Summary: Judicial autonomy from societal actors is argued herein to be a critical aspect of the rule of law and to have been overlooked by the dominance within comparative judicial politics of the role of interbranch …
Santiago Basabe-Serrano, “Informal Institutions and Judicial Independence in Paraguay, 1954-2011.” Law & Policy, vol. 37, no. 4 (2015): 350-378. Summary: This article explains how informal institutions have prevented the emergence of autonomous judges in Paraguay between 1954 and 2011. The central argument is that co-optation, clientelism, and judicial corruption considered as informal institutions, rooted during the …
A whistleblower complaint made public this week accuses Emil Bove, President Trump’s nominee to the federal appeals court, of suggesting the Justice Department should ignore court orders blocking the deportation of Venezuelan migrants. Former DOJ lawyer Erez Reuveni, who filed the complaint, claims Bove made the remark during a March meeting, allegedly urging the department …
This article critiques the mythologized self-image of lawyers as neutral experts, arguing that in the absence of broader societal consensus, their function becomes both overextended and ideologically fraught, raising urgent questions about the legitimacy and limits of legal authority in postmodern, fragmented democratic societies.
The article calls for renewed attention to the civic and justice-oriented dimensions of legal training and leadership.