Judicial resistance and the virtues

Judicial resistance and the virtues

Blog Article

This article concerns the concept of judicial resistance understood in connection with Long Socks the individual, on-bench decisions undertaken by judges in view of upholding the rule of law and in defiance of measures introduced by authoritarian, semi-authoritarian, "illiberal", or otherwise oppressive regimes.The point of focus is the normative dimension of acts of judicial resistance and the contention that they constitute the rightful obligation of judges.The article claims that judicial resistance interpreted as a right or duty is objectionable.As it will be argued, the key reason is the inadequacy of the rule-oriented models (deontic and consequentialist) on which the categories of right and duty rest to address the descriptively and evaluatively thick notion of judicial resistance.

Instead, the article will argue for a virtue-centred model which explains judicial resistance through the character strengths of a virtuous judge.After expounding the conception of judicial virtue and the approach of a virtuous judge, the analysis will argue how perceiving Hops the capacity to resist in terms of virtue allows for overcoming difficulties connected with the claim that a judge has a right or duty to resist.In the last part, the analysis will propose a list of three virtues that may be especially adequate for judicial resistance based on selected examples.