POLITICAL SCIENCE

Whether Judges and Justices Use Their Political Ideology When Deciding Cases

Whether Judges and Justices Use Their Political Ideology When Deciding Cases

Introduction

When any citizen thinks of the ideal of Justice, the image that comes to his mind is the image of the blindfolded lady with the scales in his hand, that is, idyllic model of an independent judiciary, which is impartial and is able to decide all matters in the strictest neutrality. For this reason, when a judge has expressed an opinion in a social media or in any another area, the first thing is one tends to think that such action is damaging the image of independence of the judiciary, and secondly, a questioned how legitimacy can make that kind of action.

It seems that the figure which they (citizens) like seeing a judge or magistrate, is a figure that is almost aseptically to any political or philosophical ideology, contrary to what is expected from a person belonging to the executive or legislative, or any other citizen, but they do not think that the judges could have their own ideology, or he could be exercising his right of freedom of thought. These questions arise because the judge is a citizen, but a special citizen. The particularity of a judge is that it embodies the judiciary, and it is he who is responsible for exercising the judicial function. It was noted that one reason that justifies the court to exercise such function is in the position in the process. In the resolution of a conflict, the judge is in a supra-party status, which entitles him to resolve it from the pure objectivity, without there being any interest and without him being subject to any kind of influence or pressure. What legitimates the judge in the eyes of the parties is the position of independence and impartiality from which it operates, that is, the confidence that its decision will be above any conditioning outside the law.

The field of judicial politics began when scholars began to doubt that the decisions of judges were driven solely, or primarily, by the law. The legal argument has traditionally maintained that judges are like technicians, applying the law to the facts, so that the decisions they make are not based on their preferences or their emotions but on an expert reading of the law. Judicial politics insists that this account is both incomplete and misleading. The primary goal in the field is to explain what factors influence the decisions made by judges, particularly those serving on the U.S. Supreme Court and other appellate tribunals. There are other topics raised in the field of judicial politics, including the interaction between courts and other parts of the political system and the ability of judges to effect change outside their courtrooms. Although these are important and worthy subjects for study, this chapter focuses on judicial decision making, since decision making is the area in which the field has made the most progress in developing explanatory theories (Sanders, ...