Judges under stress: Legal complexes and a sociology of hope

Abstract

Interdisciplinary sociolegal scholarship over the past thirty years has demonstrated that the epochal struggle for political liberalism over all continents over the longue durée invariably implicates not only lawyers but also judges within a wider legal complex. This article brings into juxtaposition the comparative and historical research on legal complexes with the stresses confronted by judges in Central and Eastern Europe. The article proceeds in five parts. First, based on comparative research, it offers a conceptual analysis of six distinctive meanings of judges and judiciaries as (i) single persons, (ii) conglomerations, (iii) institutions, (iv) collective actors, (v) cases, and (vi) symbolic ideals. Second, it identifies varieties of stressors—adverse pressures on judges—that erode the legitimacy and efficacy of different categories of judges. Different classes of stressors appear to have affinities with the six ways that judges and judiciaries are understood and conceived. Third, building on empirical evidence across the world in the past 400 years, with special reference to Egypt, Pakistan, Taiwan and Hong Kong in recent decades, it proposes that a theory of legal complexes sharpens focus on interactions among practicing legal professions that will influence the robustness of judges’ ability to cope with stress. Domestic legal complexes can include judges, private lawyers, government lawyers, legal academics and prosecutors. International legal complexes increasingly affect the viability of robust, resilient and adaptive judiciaries when they are under threat. Fourth, it argues that evidence on legal complexes can move scholarship on judges under stress from static frameworks of social structures to the dynamics of a sociology of hope. Legal complexes offer structural resourcefulness and repertoires of action, including street demonstrations and public protests, media campaigns and boycotts, bar association declarations of support and granting of awards, to educating publics. Fifth, the paper identifies four sets of contingencies that recur comparatively in legal complex efforts to relieve stress on judges and judiciaries. The many points at which judiciaries can be defended and promoted, the sheer profusion of ways that combinations of legal complexes can combine and contend for judiciaries, together conjoin to offer hope that often springs from a redemptive irony of repression by authoritarian rulers who seek to erode judicial authority and undermine a liberal-legal order. ¿Cómo contribuye la sociología de los complejos jurídicos a la comprensión de los jueces sometidos a tensión en la conformación de órdenes políticos jurídico-liberales? En primer lugar, el artículo propone seis significados distintivos de los jueces y los poderes judiciales. En segundo lugar, identifica los factores de estrés que erosionan la legitimidad y la eficacia de diferentes categorías de jueces. En tercer lugar, ilustrado con estudios sobre Egipto, Pakistán, Taiwán y Hong Kong, propone que una teoría de los complejos jurídicos nacionales e internacionales agudiza las explicaciones sobre la solidez de la capacidad de los jueces para hacer frente al estrés. En cuarto lugar, se sostiene que las pruebas sobre los complejos jurídicos pueden hacer que los estudios sobre los jueces sometidos a estrés pasen de los marcos estáticos de las estructuras sociales a la dinámica de una sociología de la esperanza en la que los recursos estructurales y los repertorios de acción multiplican las oportunidades de resistir al estrés. En quinto lugar, tras identificar las contingencias que pueden aliviar el estrés de los jueces y las judicaturas, el artículo termina señalando una ironía redentora de la represión por parte de los gobernantes autoritarios.