What is Judicial Independence?

The concept of judicial independence can be more clearly understood in the context of specific threats to its existence.

These threats include:

•  Inappropriate threats of impeachment prompted by individual decisions;

• Political threats intended to influence a judge’s decision in an individual case;

• Public responses to specific decisions that use weighted phrases like "judicial activism;"

• Misleading criticism of individual decisions, which is compounded by the prohibition on judicial response;

• Poor interbranch relationships between the judiciary and Congress marked by the lack of communication;

• Line-item veto authority that allows appropriations for the judiciary to be used by the President in improperly influential ways;

• Congressional limits on or curtailment of jurisdiction;

• Congress’ ability to combine requests for judicial pay increases with Congressional requests for the same, and the lack of periodic and automatic judicial salary increases for cost-of-living adjustments;

• Limited public awareness of the availability of the Judicial Conduct and Disability Act as an option for addressing possible judicial misconduct;

• Underfunding and workload;

• Elections leading to concerns and potential conflicts of interest regarding campaign contributions;

• Retention elections posing the threat of judges being targeted by special interest groups based on legally correct but politically or socially unpopular decisions;

An Independent Judiciary, Report of the Commission on Separation of Powers and Judicial Independence, American Bar Association, July 4, 1997.

The Independence of the Judicial Branch in the New Republic, Charles Gardner Geyh and Emily Field Van Tassel, 74 Chicago Kent Law Review 31, 1998.