Constitutionalization of judicial independence: In comparative law and in Serbian legislation

The aim of this paper is to point out that the guarantees of judicial independence have to be regulated by the Constitution as they create de iure framework for the independence of the judiciary in the rule of law system. The author is aware that the constitutional guarantees are per se insufficient and that their primary features may yield different effects depending on the political environment and cultural matrix in which they take effect. The judicial system operates in the circumstances of the separation of powers, where the independent judiciary is corroborated a guarantee of the rule of law. Hence, it is important to concurrently elaborate on the institutional and personal guarantees of judicial independence, focusing on the responsibility of the political authorities to create a relevant social environment for the operation of the independent judiciary as well as on the responsibility of the judiciary to independently exercise their judicial function. The author's intention in this paper is to provides a comparative analysis on the guarantees of independent judiciary and the minimum rules that constitute the cohesive core which serves as the common meeting grounds not only for the EU member states but also for all countries of the European-Continental legal system in their efforts to ensure the judicial independence as the primary condition for exercising the rule of law. The corpus of constitutional guarantees on independent judiciary includes the following elements: the judicial appointments and termination of a judicial office; the permanence of the judicial office and impartiality in decision-making processes; the professional responsibility and judicial immunity; as well as the recently established judicial councils, which have been given the constitutional authority to protect the independence of the judiciary.