Methods of Judicial Selection and Their Impact on Judicial Independence

Within the legal community judicial independence is understood, not as an intrinsic good or an end in itself, but as a means to achieve other ends. 1 If judges are independent-if they are insulated from political and other controls that could undermine their impartial judgment-it is thought that judges will be better able to uphold the rule of law, preserve the separation of powers, and promote due process of law. 2 Scholars, judges, and lawyers often acknowledge that judicial independence has institutional and decisional dimensions: institutional independence concerns the capacity of the judiciary as a separate branch of government to resist encroachments from the political branches and thereby preserve the separation of powers; decisional independence, in contrast, concerns the capacity of individual judges to decide cases without threats or intimidation that could interfere with their ability to uphold the rule of law. 3 Properly understood then, judicial independence is circumscribed by the purposes it serves: decisional independence, for example, does not mean freedom from all external constraints, but only those constraints that interfere with a judge's ability to uphold the rule of law.Indeed, some forms of independence from decisional constraint, such as the freedom to decide cases for the bene½t of friends or in exchange for bribes, are antithetical to the rule-oflaw values that judicial independence is