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72 S. Cal. L. Rev. 353 (1998-1999)
Independent Judges, Dependent Judiciary: Explaining Judicial Independence

handle is hein.journals/scal72 and id is 363 raw text is: ARTICLE INDEPENDENT JUDGES, DEPENDENT JUDICIARY: EXPLAINING JUDICIAL INDEPENDENCE JOHN FEREJOHN* I. INTRODUCTION Judicial independence is an idea that has both internal (or normative) and external (or institutional) aspects. From a normative viewpoint, judges should be autonomous moral agents, who can be relied on to carry out their public duties independent of venal or ideological considerations. In- dependence, or impartiality, in this sense is a desirable aspect of a judge's character. But judges are human, and the things they must decide can matter greatly to people. Therefore, we are also concerned with providing institutional shields against the threats or temptations that might come their way. Judicial independence, in this sense, is a feature of the institu- tional setting within which judging takes place. Institutional judicial inde- pendence is, however, a complex value in that it really cannot be seen as something valuable in itself. Rather, it is instrumental to the pursuit of other values, such as the rule of law or constitutional values. In this Article, I focus on characterizing and explaining the structure of institutional protections for judges and legal processes within the federal * Carolyn S.G. Munro Professor of Political Science and Senior Fellow of the Hoover Institu- tion, Stanford University. Visiting Professor of Law and Politics, New York University School of Law. Thanks are due to the NYU Colloquium on Law and Politics, and particularly to Larry Kramer, Lewis Komhauser, Ricky Revesz, and Larry Sager for helpful comments on an earlier draft of this Article. While I am sure that I have not been able to fully respond to their criticisms, I owe them greatly for their generosity.

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