TRIIAL : Trust, independence, impartiality and accountability of judges

Abstract

This Casebook is one of the deliverables of the European Commission’s funded project TRIIAL - TRust, Independence, Impartiality and Accountability of judges and arbitrators safeguarding the rule of Law under the EU Charter. Its main purpose is to offer contextualised training materials to judges and trainers on rule of law issues. It offers an analysis of the rule of law issues based on standards developed in close to 200 European and national cases collected by the TRIIAL team across 12 jurisdictions. It attempts to illustrate both the activities of pan-European courts engaged in addressing systemic pan-European questions and problems occurring on a more local scale within specific EU jurisdictions. Part I presents the abstract standard of judicial independence as it emerges from the case law of the European Courts. As such, this part functions on its own and its content are echoed in the subsequent Part II. There, the casebook offers a more in-depth presentation of the generalised jurisprudential trends with a selection of case notes illustrative of more interesting phenomena visible in the case law. This part can be complemented with the reading of case notes from other jurisdictions as made available in CJC TRIIAL Database. The Final Part III exemplifies Hypotheticals – scenarios to be used in the training sessions anchored in the issues presented in Part II.