Disciplining Judges Contemporary Challenges and Controversies

Globally, countries are faced with a complex act of statecraft: how to design and deploy a defensible complaints and discipline regime for judges. In this collection, contributors provide critical analyses of judicial complaints and discipline systems in thirteen diverse jurisdictions, revealing that an effective and legitimate regime requires the nuanced calibration of numerous public values including independence, accountability, impartiality, fairness, reasoned justification, transparency, representation, and efficiency.

The jurisdictions examined are Australia, Canada, China, Croatia, England and Wales, India, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Nigeria, Poland, South Africa, and the United States. The core findings are four-fold. First, the norms and practices of each discipline regime differ in ways that reflect distinct social, political, and cultural contexts. Second, some jurisdictions are doing better than others in responding to challenges of designing a nuanced and normatively defensible regime. Third, no jurisdiction has yet managed to construct a regime that can be said to adequately promote public confidence. Finally, important lessons can be learned through analysis of, and critically constructive engagement with, other jurisdictions.

The first comprehensive comparative collection on judicial discipline systems, Disciplining Judges, will inspire new conversations among academics, students, judges, governmental officials and political scientists.

Contents:

1 Introduction: Disciplining judges – exercising statecraft 1
Richard Devlin and Sheila Wildeman
2 Regulation of judicial misconduct in Australia: why, how
and where next? 23
Suzanne Le Mire
3 The Canadian Judicial Council’s (elusive) quest for legitimacy 49
Richard Devlin and Sheila Wildeman
4 The long march to professionalizing judicial discipline in China 78
Susan Finder
5 Fighting with the ghosts of the past: the discipline process
for judges in Croatian law 107
Dubravka Aksamovic and Sanja Miševi?
6 Judicial conduct, complaints and discipline in England and
Wales: assessing the new approach 130
Graham Gee
7 ‘Belling the cat’: judicial discipline in India 155
Tony George Puthucherril
8 Why is the complaints procedure still lacking in Italy? The
difficult pathway towards a more transparent, inclusive and
effective disciplinary system 179
Daniela Cavallini
9 Shifting the balance: public perspective and the Japanese
judicial discipline process 204
Sarah M R Cravens
10 Disciplinary control of judges in the Netherlands:
a vulnerable system 225
Jonathan E Soeharno
11 The politics of regulating and disciplining judges in Nigeria 254
Olabisi D Akinkugbe
12 Weaponizing judicial discipline: Poland 278
Fryderyk Zoll and Leah Wortham
13 Judge and be judged: judicial discipline in South Africa 308
Hugh Corder and Calli Solik
14 Legal process theory and judicial discipline in the United States 334
Dmitry Bam

Index