Does the new openness promote judicial independence?
I am as firm a believer in “judicial independence” as the next person. But some of my opponent’s supporters who have been waving the flag of judicial independence so vigorously of late turn out to have a pretty narrow idea of what judicial independence is. And, I suggest, they have forgotten that the public’s interest in judicial independence is, and always should be, in creative tension with the equally-weighty public interest in “judicial accountability,” and I’m speaking of real accountability. In short, the two, independence and accountability, are two parts of an antinomy.