Appointment, discipline and removal of judges: A comparison of the Swiss and New Zealand judiciaries

<p>This paper gives an overview of the legal system of Switzerland and then compares the judiciaries of Switzerland and New Zealand. As far as Switzerland is concerned, it covers both the system of the Swiss Federation and the systems in the Cantons. After analysing the powers enjoyed by the judiciary via the legislature, the paper examines the appointment of judges in detail. The author explains how in Switzerland openly political and other considerations are weighed in the course of electing judges and how the appointment of lay judges is balanced with an active role of law clerks. In contrast, New Zealand has a proud tradition of apolitical judicial appointments that are made solely based on merit. The author criticises that Swiss judges are elected for a term of office, whereas New Zealand judges enjoy the security of tenure and thus, a greater judicial independence. Lastly, the paper covers the removal and discipline of judges, where the author, while he commends the recent reform in New Zealand, speaks out for a system where the ultimate decision is given to an independent judicial body rather than a parliament.</p>

Appointment, discipline and removal of judges: A comparison of the Swiss and New Zealand judiciaries

<p>This paper gives an overview of the legal system of Switzerland and then compares the judiciaries of Switzerland and New Zealand. As far as Switzerland is concerned, it covers both the system of the Swiss Federation and the systems in the Cantons. After analysing the powers enjoyed by the judiciary via the legislature, the paper examines the appointment of judges in detail. The author explains how in Switzerland openly political and other considerations are weighed in the course of electing judges and how the appointment of lay judges is balanced with an active role of law clerks. In contrast, New Zealand has a proud tradition of apolitical judicial appointments that are made solely based on merit. The author criticises that Swiss judges are elected for a term of office, whereas New Zealand judges enjoy the security of tenure and thus, a greater judicial independence. Lastly, the paper covers the removal and discipline of judges, where the author, while he commends the recent reform in New Zealand, speaks out for a system where the ultimate decision is given to an independent judicial body rather than a parliament.</p>

Experiences on the Court

The chapter contains more about the internal business of the Court, the interaction among the judges, the role of the judge rapporteur, the influence of the Court’s president, the cooperation with the law clerks, the value of oral arguments. Furthermore, it describes the position of the Court within the system of separation of powers. End of the term as justice.

The Influence of Personalized Knowledge at the Supreme Court: How (Some) Former Law Clerks Have the Inside Track

When arguing at the U.S. Supreme Court, former High Court law clerks enjoy significant influence over their former justices. Our analysis of forty years of judicial votes reveals that an attorney who formerly clerked for a justice is 16 percent more likely to capture that justice’s vote than an otherwise identical attorney who never clerked. What is more, an attorney who formerly clerked for a justice is 14 to 16 percent more likely to capture that justice’s vote than an otherwise identical attorney who previously clerked for a different justice. Former clerk influence is substantial, targeted, and appears to come from clerks’ personalized information about their justices. These results answer an important empirical question about the role of attorneys while raising normative concerns over fairness in litigation.

Hercules in the Colombian Constitutional Court

This paper explores how the Colombian Constitutional Court has used the legal and political philosophy of Ronald Dworkin to show that the use of the concepts of rights as trump cards, individual autonomy, and state neutrality, have configured the reception of egalitarian liberalism. This conclusion is reached by means of an analysis of the meaning and use of these concepts in certain judicial decisions and of personal interviews with certain head justices and law clerks of said Court, which also made it possible to frame this question within the larger issue of the relationship of philosophy to the decisions of the judges.

Behind the Mask of Method: Political Orientation and Constitutional Interpretive Preferences (with Joshua Ferguson and Linda Babcock)

Debate about how to best interpret the Constitution often revolves around interpretive methodologies (e.g., originalism or expansive interpretation). This article examines whether individuals' political orientation influences the methodologies they prefer to use to interpret the Constitution. We study this proposed relationship using a survey of federal law clerks and an experimental study with college students. The survey results indicate that, compared to conservatives, liberal clerks prefer the current meaning or the most plausible appealing meaning of the constitutional text, while conservatives prefer the original meaning of the text. Liberal clerks also prefer to interpret the Constitution much more expansively. The second study manipulates the policy implications of expansive interpretation and finds this manipulation differentially affects liberals' and conservatives' expansiveness preferences.

A Review Essay on Alvin Roth’s Who Gets What—and Why

Alvin Roth's Who Gets What—And Why provides a richly accessible introduction to his pioneering work on market design. Much of economics ignores the institutions that allocate goods, blithely assuming that the mythical Walrasian auctioneer will handle everything perfectly. But markets do fail and Roth details those failures, like the market for law clerks that unravels because clerks and judges commit to each other too quickly. Roth combines theory and pragmatic experience to show how the economist can engineer successful markets. He has even enabled welfare-improving trades in kidney exchanges, where law and social repugnance forbids cash payments. (JEL C78, D47)