Conference: Judicial Independence and Rule of Law Across the Globe

司法独立和法治是自由民主主义的支柱。世界各地的宪政民主国家都面临着民粹主义和民族主义运动以及这些运动推举上台的专制领导人施加的强大政治力量。这些力量还把目标对准了国际治理体系，诱使各国政府破坏国际法庭的运作和合法性，如果不是完全退出产生这些体系的条约的话。法院应成为反对专制和不自由冲动的堡垒，捍卫法治，维护基于宪法和国际规则的秩序。了解法院如何在法院本身成为民粹主义、政治争论的场所和精心策划的攻击目标的情况下履行这些基本职能，对于保护法律秩序免受民粹主义颠覆至关重要。这种威胁的国际范围需要超越任何单一国家背景的学术努力，也需要考虑司法独立和法治在国家层面的侵蚀如何影响以规则为基础的国际秩序的未来，这种秩序依赖于运作良好的自由民主国家的存在。这一努力需要一种强有力的交流，这种交流只能通过来自世界各地的各种研究人员之间的面对面对话来实现，其中包括职业生涯早期的学者、传统上代表性不足的群体的学者以及国际知名专家的观点。民粹主义对发达国家和发展中国家的司法独立和法治构成的威胁提供了一个机会，可以审查各种政治制度下司法机构的脆弱性和复原力。学者们将在国际政治科学协会比较司法研究委员会的主持下召开会议，研究威权主义和民粹主义的压力是如何挑战、改变和加强司法独立和法治的。使用法律和社会科学的方法，参与者将在一系列司法管辖区检查这些现象。他们将带来详细的、当地的知识，以应对一系列核心问题，这些问题涉及民粹主义威胁的性质、攻击的形式以及这些攻击成功或失败的条件。不同国家的民粹主义政治动态是如何比较的，这些差异对法院有什么影响？民粹主义者在什么条件下会把法院和法治作为攻击目标？是什么因素塑造了这些攻击的形式以及法院抵御攻击的能力？现有的概念、理论和研究方法在多大程度上服务于这些调查？这次会议提供了一个独特的机会，可以从独特的比较角度来探讨这些问题，并深入了解司法独立和法治是如何制度化的，它们是如何受到威胁的，以及可以采取什么措施来应对这些威胁。这一合作努力将推动关于法院如何应对民粹主义攻击和民主倒退的学术辩论，并为法院改革者、律师协会和政策制定者的努力提供信息，以制定必要的变革，重新赋予独立性遭到破坏的法院权力。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Judicial independence and rule of law are pillars of liberal democracy. Constitutional democracies around the world face powerful political forces exerted by populist and nationalist movements and the authoritarian leaders that these movements catapult into power. These same forces also target systems of international governance, inducing governments to undermine the operation and legitimacy of international tribunals if not withdraw altogether from the treaties that give rise to these systems. Courts are expected to serve as bulwarks against authoritarian and illiberal impulses, defend the rule of law, and uphold constitutional and international rules-based orders. Understanding how they can perform these essential functions even as courts, themselves, become sites of populist, political contestation and targets of well-orchestrated attacks is critical to protecting legal orders against populist subversion. The international scope of the threat demands a scholarly effort that transcends the context of any single country and also considers how the erosion of judicial independence and rule of law at the national level affects the future of a rules-based, international order that rests on the existence of functioning liberal democracies. This effort requires the sort of robust exchange that can only occur through in-person dialogue among a diverse array of researchers who come from all parts of the world and that includes the perspectives of early-career scholars and scholars from traditionally-underrepresented groups as well as internationally renowned experts.The populist threats posed to judicial independence and rule of law in both the developed and developing world offers an opportunity to examine the vulnerabilities and resilience of judicial institutions in a wide variety of political systems. Scholars will convene under the auspices of the International Political Science Association’s Research Committee on Comparative Judicial Studies to examine how authoritarian and populist pressures are challenging, transforming, and reinforcing judicial independence and rule of law. Using law and social science approaches, participants will examine these phenomena across a range of jurisdictions. They will bring detailed, locally-informed knowledge to bear upon a set of core questions concerning the nature of the populist threats, forms of attack, and conditions under which these attacks succeed or fail. How do populist political dynamics compare across countries, and what are the implications of these differences for courts? Under what conditions do populists target courts and the rule of law? What factors shape the forms of these attacks and the abilities of courts to withstand them? And, how well do existing concepts, theories, and research methods serve these lines of inquiry? This gathering provides a unique opportunity to engage these questions from a distinctly comparative perspective and generate insights into how judicial independence and the rule of law are institutionalized, how they are threatened, and what can be done to counter the threats. This collaborative effort will advance scholarly debates on how courts respond to populist assaults and democratic backsliding as well as inform efforts of court reformers, bar associations, and policymakers to institute the changes needed to re-empower courts whose independence has been breached.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.