judges

Protection of Judicial Independence Against the Background of Historical Development of the Good Behaviour Clause as the Grounds for Removal of a Judge from Office in the Law of England and Wales and of the United States

Marcin Wilczyński

University of Łódź

District Court in Brzeziny

English abstract: In Western political tradition, judges are guardians of the rule of law. But they also may be subject to mistakes or corruption. A well-balanced system of government needs both means to guard judicial independence and means to control the judiciary, such as removal from office. Judges of senior courts (in the UK) and federal judges (in the USA) are secured in their independence by the ‘good behaviour’ clause, which makes removing them possible only if a specific action is taken by the legislature. In the UK it is an address of both Houses to the Monarch, in the USA – an impeachment. This article deals with historical roots of the ‘good behaviour’ clause and its current understanding. It stresses that in the process of the interpretation and through certain precedents, the scope of the legislature’s power to remove a judge was highly restricted. Such a restriction, however, was obtained rather due to a political culture of the analysed countries rather than the contents of the ‘good behaviour’ clause, which always carries with it the danger of political interference with the judiciary.

Key words: judiciary, removal from office, judges, UK, USA

Language: polish

Published: Number 1(46)/2026, pp. 60–76.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.36280/AFPiFS.2026.1.60

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The Structural Determinants of Attitudes of Distrust in the Practice of Professional Roles by Representatives of Selected Legal Public Trust Professions

Dr hab. Maciej Wojciechowski, prof. UG

The University of Gdańsk

English abstract: In the article, I try to show that legal dualism provides a conceptual grid for the analysis of the crisis of the rule of law. In demonstrating this, I first introduce the concept of legal dualism and then present autocratic legalism and abusive judicial review in its light. Two variants of the conceptual framework of legal dualism are suitable for describing and explaining these forms of governance. They present legal dualism as a) an instrumental action of „the main actors” in public life, and b) a social attitude that lacks a cultural imperative that allows citizens to identify with the law. Two main conclusions can be drawn from the article’s findings. First, autocratic legalism and abusive judicial review are based on the instrumentalization of the rule of law as a political ideal. Second, legal dualism as a social stance indicates that insufficient consideration of the social dimension of law has made it easier for political centres to challenge the liberal vision of the rule of law, presented by its opponents as the rule of lawyers, the social elite. A response to the charge of alienating the law in different configurations (political constitutionalism versus legal constitutionalism) is the idea of inclusivity, which can be expressed in different theoretical languages. The context for the conclusions of the article is the constitutional crisis, which is also present in the Polish legal order The empirical documentation does not determine the research methodology in the presented article. I pursue in it an approach that can be attributed to the social theory of law (B.Z. Tamanaha).

Keywords: trust, distrust, legal practice, lawyers, judges, legal formalism

Language: Polish

Published: nr 4(41)/2024, pp. 66-80.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.36280/AFPiFS.2024.4.66

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Number of downloads: 157

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Should Judges Be Empathic? The Place of Judges’ Empathy in Therapeutic Jurisprudence

Katarzyna Rużyczka

Jagiellonian University in Kraków, Poland

English abstract: Therapeutic jurisprudence (TJ) has had a influence on the judiciary and legal practice given the emergence of special courts, the so-called problem-solving courts. As understood by David B. Wexler, TJ is an approach that combines experience from many scientific fields, constituting an interdisciplinary field of research that focuses on the therapeutic and antitherapeutic consequences of laws, legal procedures, and the roles and behaviours of legal actors such as lawyers and judges. The role that they play during a trial is particularly emphasized
in this theory in the context of causing both positive and negative consequences for those participating in the trial. The first purpose of this paper is to reconstruct the understanding of empathy and its role in the therapeutic jurisprudence, and to show how the concept of empathy is understood in the context of a judge’s work, particularly in relation to main TJ authors, David B. Wexler and Bruce J. Winick.

Keywords: judicial empathy, therapeutic jurisprudence, judges, empathy

Language: English

Published: Number 3(35)/2023, pp. 53-64.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.36280//AFPiFS.2023.2.53

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Number of downloads: 315

This text is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution – Non Commercial – No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.