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Judicial Independence At Twilight, Charles G. Geyh

Articles by Maurer Faculty

Judicial independence is a fixture of American government, but its structure has never been fully understood. As long as the federal judiciary has survived episodic attacks with its independence intact, there has been no pressing need to know how or why. But a confluence of cyclical, sustained, and sudden developments now threatens the federal judiciary’s autonomy in arguably unprecedented ways and demands a more comprehensive analysis of judicial independence and its vulnerabilities. This article begins by reconceptualizing the structure of judicial independence in three tiers. At the apex is an ancient, Rule of Law Paradigm, which proceeds from the premise …