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72 S. Cal. L. Rev. 315 (1998-1999)
The Architecture of Judicial Independence

handle is hein.journals/scal72 and id is 325 raw text is: ARTICLE THE ARCHITECTURE OF JUDICIAL INDEPENDENCE STEPHEN B. BURBANK** I. INTRODUCTION Concern about judicial independence has been a recurrent feature of American history, as have attacks on courts and their decisions. In recent years, however, such attacks have become more than the expected re- sponse of persons who profoundly disagree with those decisions. They have become part of orchestrated strategies of political parties and other groups, empowered by the tools of modem political campaigns and by the ignorance of the electorate, which is the godmother of the single-issue campaign and the godfather of the sound bite.1 The perception that judicial independence is at risk has arisen before in our history. Indeed, from the perspective of people who value judicial independence, it may be that current efforts to curb it are no more serious than those faced by state and federal judiciaries in the past. Certainly they are less serious than the threats the federal judiciary and judges in some states faced in the early years of the nineteenth century.2 * 0 Copyright 1999 by Stephen B. Burbank. ** David Berger Professor for the Administration of Justice, University of Pennsylvania Law School; Vice-President, American Judicature Society. I appreciate the comments of Phyllis Beck, Stewart DaIzell, Barry Friedman, Charles Geyh, Frank Goodman, Leo Levin, Louis Pollak, Kim Scheppele, and the participants in the University of Pennsylvania Law School's Ad Hoe Faculty Workshop on a draft of this Article. 1. See, e.g., ABA COMM'N ON SEPARATION OF POWERS AND JUDICIAL INDEPENDENCE, AN INDEPENDENT JUDICIARY i-u (1997) [hereinafter ABA COMMISSION]; Stephen B. Bright, Political At- tacks on the Judiciary, 80 JUDICATURE 165, 165 (1997). 2. See infra text accompanying notes 33-36.

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