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Full-Text Articles in Law

Polish Road Toward An Illiberal State: Methods And Resistance, Adam Bodnar Jul 2021

Polish Road Toward An Illiberal State: Methods And Resistance, Adam Bodnar

Indiana Law Journal

Since 2015, Poland has experienced a backsliding in democratic and rule of law standards. The ruling party, “Law and Justice,” has adopted a series of legislative changes affecting the independence of courts and checks and balances mechanisms. Some reforms were copied from Hungary, which, as the first Member State of the European Union, started the way toward illiberal democracy in contemporary Europe. Despite pressure from international organizations, the process of changes in Poland did not stop. However, it is important to look at methods implemented to dismantling democracy, as they can be used in other countries. This paper also analyzes …


Judicial Independence At Twilight, Charles G. Geyh Jan 2021

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 …


The Architecture Of Judicial Ethics, Charles G. Geyh Jan 2021

The Architecture Of Judicial Ethics, Charles G. Geyh

Articles by Maurer Faculty

In 1999, Professor Stephen Burbank wrote an article entitled The Architecture of Judicial Independence. It is a foundational piece that gave structure to what was then an understudied field. At the heart of that article is a profound insight: stable and enduring judicial systems are the product of forces in constructive tension. Thus, in the context of judicial administration, Burbank conceptualized judicial independence with reference to judicial accountability, and characterized pressure points in the relationship between them as complementary, not contradictory; and in later work, he made a similar point about the interplay between the law and policy in judicial …