The judge whose promotion is dependent upon the will of the executive, even more, the judge who may look to a political career as a source of future distinction, neither of these is adequately protected in that independence of mind which…
Harold J. Laski
The Public Record
Harold Joseph Laski was an English political theorist and economist. He was active in politics and served as the chairman of the British Labour Party from 1945 to 1946 and was a professor at the London School of Economics from 1926 to 1950. He first promoted pluralism by emphasising the importance of local voluntary communities such as trade unions. After 1930, he began to emphasize the need for a workers' revolution, which he hinted might be violent. Laski's position angered Labour leaders who promised a nonviolent democratic transformation. Laski's position on democracy-threatening violence came under further attack from Prime Minister Winston Churchill in the 1945 UK general election, and the Labour Party had to disavow Laski, its own chairman.
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Judicial independence is not merely a matter of mechanical technique; it is also psychological in character.
Election, re-election, a power in the government to dismiss, are all of them incompatible with the function the judge is to perform.
Once a man has been appointed to judicial office nothing must stand in the way of his complete independence of mind.
There may be an age-limit of service, of course; but, this apart, nothing should permit the removal of a judge from the bench except corruption or physical unfitness.
It must not be within the power either of the government or other persons to deprive him of his authority because, as best he may, he applies the law.
He must not suffer in his person or position because of the view he takes.
Here, obviously, the judge must be assured that his independence may be maintained with safety to himself.
The government, for instance, charges a man with treason; obviously he is deprived of something essential to his freedom if the law is strained so as to make of treason something it in fact is not in order to cover the acts which the…
The business of a judiciary, broadly speaking, is the impartial interpretation of the law as between government and citizen, or between classes of citizens who dispute with one another.
In Anglo-Saxon communities it has been regarded as elementary that the interpretation of law should be entrusted to an independent body of officials--the judges--who can arbitrate impartially between government and citizens.
Not the least important problem of our time is that which arises when the legality of their administration is in question.
It is urgent that they should be binding upon all without fear or favour; that I, for instance, should be able to live secure in the knowledge that they will not apply to me differently from their incidence upon others.
It can, I think, be shown that no citizen is secure in liberty unless certain rights are guaranteed to him, rights which the government of the state cannot hope to overthrow; and unless, to secure the maintenance of those rights, there is…
The history of the struggle for popular freedom has given us knowledge of certain rules in the organization of a state the presence of which is fundamental to freedom.
Responsible government in a democracy lives always in the shadow of coming defeat; and this makes it eager to satisfy those with whose destinies it is charged.
Power that is unaccountable makes instruments of men who should be ends in themselves.
If it is so, it ceases to give attention to the purposes for which it is conferred and thinks only of the well-being of those who can exercise it.
To be free a people must be able to choose its rulers at stated intervals simply because there is no other way in which their wants, as they experience those wants, will receive attention.
Whatever is to be said against the democratic form of state, it seems to me unquestionable that it has forced the needs of humble men on the attention of government in a way impossible under any other form.
They will do things for him, but not those things he himself regards as urgent; as Parliament a hundred years ago met the grim problem of urban want by building more churches to the glory of the Lord.
Unfree for the simple reason that the rulers of the state will not regard his will as entitled to consideration in the making of policy.
The right, therefore, to the franchise is essential to liberty; and a citizen excluded from it is unfree.
To read the history of England before the enfranchisement of the wage-earner is to realize that however small is the value of the franchise it still assures the attention of government to grievance.
For if he does not share in making the government, if he cannot, where his fellows so choose, be himself made one of the rulers of the state, he is excluded from that which secures him the certainty that his experience counts.
Politicians like Harold J. Laski
