Abstract
The autonomy of legal institutions is put on the most severe test when they are under attack by other organs of the state. The article discusses the Western legal tradition from an institutional perspective and the concepts of ‘institutions’, ‘path dependence’ and ‘rule of law’. Under this perspective, legal institutions have an autonomous development with characteristics that must be explained by their evolutionary origins. The article seeks to demonstrate that institutional theory deserves closer attention when studying law and political power and to place more the refined notions of the Western legal tradition and the Rule of law from legal research into the theoretical approach of institutional theory. Based on the example of judicial independence in Nazi Germany it seeks to test the explanatory power of institutional theory to legal phenomena.
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Notes
European Commission for Democracy through Law (Venice Commission) Report on the Independence of the Judicial System Part 1: The Independence of Judges, Adopted by the Venice Commission at its 82nd Plenary Session (Venice, 12–13 March 2010) CDL-AD(2010)004 paragraph 31.
A critical overview and assessment of North’s theory of institutions is provided by Faundez (2016).
Institutions as part of the factors shaping opportunities for judicial action is highlighted by Gloppen et al. (2010: 3).
See Tamanaha (2004) chapter 3 in the relation between liberalism and the rule of law.
Trials of War Criminals Before the Nuremberg Military Tribunals, vol. III, The Justice Case, Washington 1951, p. 31.
The account here builds on Koch (1989), pp. 107–110.
Trial of the Major War Criminals before the International Military Tribunal, Nuremberg 14 November 1945–1 October 1946 vol. 17, p. 487.
The Justice Case, p. 1020.
“Indeed, in regard to the rule-structure of a developed legal system, it is fascinating to follow the semi-analogue of one of those medieval cathedrals whose building reached across the centuries. In the law—at least in our own—there has never been an original entire plan by any master-architect; but that I think highly probable also in regard to many of those cathedrals which rested content over generations with a choir. In any event, for structured rules and structured stone alike, one finds unit after unit, set up aforetime, in a "style" whose reason has lost meaning to the later user, but whose form will bind him still. (…) And as with a medieval cathedral, work done in an older period-style persists beyond its own day. One finds shift of plan, sudden, irreverent, even rebellious-old wall, old stone, old ornament, being pressed into "modern" service, in a new design. Too, change small enough in scope can sometimes alter an entire aspect, as when the fourteenth century chapel-rows were built between the buttresses, and window and wall pushed outward to make great, smooth space-the buttresses, as the phrasing goes, "drawn in"; or when Gothic vaulting was made to upheave a nave designed for the balanced measure of the Romanesque; or ornate plaster masked upon ancient stone or brick or varicolor, and the horizontal whirl of baroque, in every image, thrown in to force upon eye-lifting Gothic an almost jazz-like rhythm.” K. N. Llewellyn, On the Good, the True, the Beautiful, in Law, 9 University of Chicago Law Review 1942 pp. 224–265.
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Acknowledgements
I would like to thank the Institute for Advanced Study, University of Durham, England for providing me with an excellent research environment for much of the time spent researching this article. I would also like to thank the anonymous reviewers for helpful criticism and comments.
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Graver, H.P. Judicial Independence Under Authoritarian Rule: An Institutional Approach to the Legal Tradition of the West. Hague J Rule Law 10, 317–339 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40803-018-0071-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40803-018-0071-8