Search

What role do judges play in protection of principles of constitutional democracy and rule of law? Scholarship often portrays courts as guardians of democracy. But is that how judges understand their role? Building on a sociological approach, this project argues that judges in different political and cultural settings internalise meta-concepts like democracy, rule of law and judicial independence differently. This then reflects on how they see and fulfil their role within political system. In this sense, the project presents a prologue to a wider research on motivations of judges to resist or defer to the democratic decay. It argues that judicial resistance is a complex phenomenon that depends on a variety of factors, which can however be organised in three logical steps. In order to resist, judges first need to recognise the attack and its risks, weigh these risks against potential personal gains, decide how to act, and finally communicate the risks to the public and their immediate allies. The project zooms in on the first stage and using the plausibility study of England and Slovakia discusses the process in which judges internalise their roles in democracy and build awareness of potential challenges and measures they can use to deter them.