Judges for Justice

Abstract

Time has come to sum up the main findings of the book. In the introduction, I stated that the western legal tradition has common roots and a common history. This includes an ideology of law as something autonomous dedicated to protecting more general values such as justice, equality, and the rule of law that bind judges together across time and space. The book has shown how judges struggle to accommodate this ideology when it is under attack by the legislator and the executive, how they defend it, and how they depart from it. The bind is fragile and threadbare at times, at other times almost nonexistent. The fact that it is still there can, however, be seen in the way judges collaborating with authoritarian regimes still try to legitimise their actions with an appeal to this ideology. Some of them are even troubled by a bad conscience. Moreover, we must not forget that even in the deepest darkness of authoritarianism, there are judges who remain true to the ideology and work to counter the oppressive measures of the regime. Does the existence of this bind actually make life better for people living under such conditions subjected to its legal system? Unfortunately, in most cases, it does not. Nevertheless, the fact that it is there gives hope that we can improve the protection it offers. How this can be encouraged is what we turn to now.