A. IntroductionThe project Judges under Stress aims to elaborate on a more in-depth understanding of the historical process that is often covered by the "grand narratives." These are commonly built on the notions of old institutionalism focusing on formal institutions, providing clear-cut, stable, rigid, unquestionable versions of the past. Our quest is to dismantle these narratives.The grand narratives lack the understanding that the countries' transition may not depend solely on a change of formal rules. They focus on important events, ruptures, during which the formal framework changes. However, the change may be rooted in a shift of informal norms, personnel, tradition, and culture. Narratives are easy to follow; they are likely to be heard and easily retold. They are often described in a limited scope because of the hesitance of taking a challenge to consider all the social development, everyday life, ideology, resistance, obedience, legislature, common sense, academic works, and other factors. Therefore, the narratives are often told periodically, as one block of events, chronologically coming after another, distinguished only by a beginning and an end. However, our project would like to doubt rigid concepts of beginnings and ends. What often might be considered a start of some era may be a continuation of the previous process and previous decisions from limited possibilities of past choices.An institution is a crucial concept. It is a structure, a web of events, decisions, knowledge, rules, traditions, habits, morals that form social life. Douglass North defines institutions as "humanly devised constraints that structure political, economic and social interaction." 1 Institutions define roles, relations, and powers. People fill these positions and thereby form organizations. Moreover, in institutions, we may find more intricate structures that explain reality in a more detailed, verifiable, and reliable way. Deconstruction of the institution may show us, for example, that what might be a significant rupture in the political sphere of social reality, might still be represented by continuity in the field of personnel of state administration or habitus of the members of the group that contradicts the aims of the formal rules. While the grand narratives focus on discontinuities of formal rules, the informal continuities stay often overseen.We decided to deconstruct these narratives and verify them with knowledge of the past and extensive archival work. Our project aims to research the specific events, policies, and This special issue emerged from the project Judges under Stress -The Breaking Point of Judicial Institutions Project. The project is financed by the FRIPRO program of the Norwegian Research Council and the University of Oslo (2019Oslo ( -2022.

This article offers an opening to Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) situation and attacks against the judiciary in this region since 2010. The focus is not primarily on historical path dependence like the rest of this issue. Instead, the focus aims at the nature of attacks on the judiciary. Such attacks have appeared in CEE and the US in recent years. Its interest lies in explaining similar patterns visible in the judiciaries of CEE. Particularly, it looks at the current conditions in the Czech judiciary, political interventions in Poland since 2015 and in Hungary since 2010, and undermining of trust towards judiciary in the U.S., where attempts for delegitimizing the judiciary have happened since 2016. The article draws on similarities of attacks of authoritarian governments and responses of judiciaries. The authors highlight similarities and diversities of CEE countries 30 years after the fall of the communist regime and a path of these resemblances and varieties.

Is it possible to distinguish whether a government is willing to eliminate its accountability or aims for public trust or efficacy growth? Moreover, which elements in the government’s actions differentiate valid criticism from an attack on the independence of the judiciary? This paper proposes an original approach toward recognizing an attack on the judiciary. While previous approaches focused on the reformer’s motivation, adherence to international standards, or the requirement of the “tribunal established by the law,” this approach is looking for a kernel of judicial independence and finds it in sufficient conditions for a judge’s free and impartial decision. In the paper, changes in Hungary and Poland will be compared to the Slovak judicial reform since 2020. While after three decades after the fall of state socialism, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia face similar problems of backsliding of the rule of law and emerging populism, different motivations, interpretations, and outcomes of the judicial reforms can be seen in Slovakia.

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This Article explores the similarities between the principles which guide the judiciary nowadays and those typical for the functioning of the Communist justice system, particularly the susceptibility to obedience to the requests, orders, or meeting anticipations. The habitus of the judges typical for the authoritarian regime has persisted until these days and was the main reason for the judicial corruption revealed in the “Threema scandal.” This Article’s argument does not connect the judiciary’s dependency to the Communist legacy embodied in members of the judiciary who served before 1989 and are active today. Still, the argument presumes that the Communist heritage is a key to understanding the current situation. The past heritage is hidden in the habitus of the agents or members of the judiciary. This habitus may be unconscious yet defining for the behavior of the agents. The Article aims to identify which continuities of the judicial habitus are apparent in the current judiciary. To demonstrate changes in the position of the judiciary, it presents a thesis of the development of the judiciary from an instrument of the governing party in maintaining a homogenous and subordinated society to the current situation of the Slovak judiciary, defined as a crisis of mental independence resulting in inappropriate behavior and corruption.