ABSTRACT
A dominant feature of the current developments in the judiciary is the increasing pressure for greater accountability. This trend is not unique to England and Wales but is evident in many other judiciaries around the world. As the role of judges has expanded in liberal democracies in consequence of their increasing numbers and influence on policy-making, the demands for greater political and social accountability have grown. To date, the development of mechanisms of accountability has been strictly limited by the competing requirements of judicial independence which has traditionally been taken to require that judges must occupy 'a place apart' in the social and political world (Friedland, 1995). The judiciary has argued strongly for the application of a very wide definition of the principle in order to ensure that judges are independent in both an individual and a collective sense from all sources of influence, whether internal from other judges or external from government, the media or others. The effect of this approach has been to exclude most forms of accountability by which decision-makers in other spheres of public service explain their actions and answer for the consequences. Because accountability has been viewed as posing a threat to judicial independence, its introduction in the judiciary has been slower and more controversial than in other areas of public life.
