Sir, – Oliver Sears correctly identifies judicial independence as being a “keystone” of any liberal democracy (“Triple lock of free elections, independent judiciary and free press no guarantee against populism”, Opinion & Analysis, July 20th).
However, he goes on to compare attempts in Hungary and Poland to “stack the judiciary” with the US supreme court, which he says is now “little more than a cudgel for the Republican Party”.
The current composition of that court was decided through a nomination process which has been in place since 1869, and is therefore in no way comparable to the recent court-packing proposals in Poland and Hungary.
Surely a better comparison with Hungary and Poland would be the official policy of the Democratic Party – the governing party in the US – to do its own “stacking” by adding four judges of its choosing to the supreme court, through legislation which it unveiled last week?
In all three countries – Poland, Hungary and the United States – judges are seen by the ruling parties of government as being out of step with their policy agenda, and therefore need to be brought to heel. Moves to do so in Poland and Hungary are rightly viewed as an outrage, but the US Democrats’ court-packing plan has caused barely a peep on this side of the Atlantic.
Why is that?
When will the Irish judiciary be sending a representative to Washington to protest these court-packing proposals, as they did in 2021 when Mr Justice John MacMenamin joined a protest in Warsaw? Where are the indignant statements from the Bar Council and the Law Society?
The clear implication of Mr Sears’s comments, and the silence in the face of US court-packing proposals, is that judicial independence is only worth protecting when judges make decisions which align with the views of the political establishment.
It is this notion – that respect for democratic process depends on whether we agree with its outcomes – which is the true corrosive agent of political populism. – Yours, etc,
BARRY WALSH,
Clontarf,
Dublin 3.