Perils of Judicial Self-Government in Transitional Societies

David Kosař is currently Head of the Department of Constitutional Law and Political Science in the Faculty of Law, Universitas Masarykiana Brunensis, Czech Republic. He clerked for a Justice and then the Vice-President of the Supreme Administrative Court, and for a Justice of the Constitutional Court of the Czech Republic.

• Introduction; Part I. Judicial Accountability: Theoretical Framework: 1. The concept of judicial accountability; 2. Mechanisms of judicial accountability; 3. Judicial accountability and judicial councils; Part II. Holding Czech and Slovak Judges Accountable: 4. Prologue to the case studies: methodology and data reporting; 5. The Czech Republic; 6. Slovakia; 7. Evaluation: the Czech Republic and Slovakia compared; Part III. Conclusions and Implications: 8. Judicial accountability and judicial councils: critical appraisal; Annexes.

'Kosař … relies on more than 800 case studies from the Czech and Slovak disciplinary courts from 1993 to 2010 to analyze differing forms of accountability of the least accountable branch of government: the judiciary. The volume's first part lays the theoretical framework that informs the empirical analysis presented in chapters 4 to 7. It defines judicial accountability, describes its mechanisms, and overviews the role of judicial councils in insulating the judiciary from politics, enhancing its independence, and thus ensuring judicial accountability. Chapter 4 comments on the methodology of the empirical research, explaining case selection and case analysis, whereas chapters 5 to 7 compare cases from the Czech and Slovak Republics. The final chapter serves as a conclusion, arguing that the judicial council increases judicial autonomy without necessarily improving the independence of individual judges. Recommended.' L. Stan, Choice