ABSTRACT
Judicial independence is a goal democracies strive to achieve. The judiciary should be independent from the parties to a conflict, independent from the political institutions of a government, and independent from contested political ideologies. Independence is the institutional or structural condition of neutrality in judicial decision-making. In some obvious sense, the proposed international judiciary would be both independent and neutral. The court's role from the first perspective on independence was that of inscribing the private transaction in a public narrative; its role from this second perspective is that of legitimating a claim to speak for the state. Judicial independence now makes possible the delegitimization of the government and the recognition of a new and competing set of representatives of the state. At this point, we are well beyond the possibility of judicial independence. A judge loses independence at the moment of decision, if that is also the moment of accepting responsibility.
