Judicial populism

Mátyás Bencze

Chapter 12 in Research Handbook on Judging and the Judiciary, 2025, pp 229-253 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: This chapter addresses three sets of issues related to judicial populism. It first defines the term ‘judicial populism’ by distinguishing it from other, similar judicial behaviours (such as deference to a populist government, ‘off-the-bench’ populism or progressivism) and clarifies its relationship to political populism. The second question is normative: should judges pursue a populist agenda? I conclude that there is no general answer to this question and that the assessment of populist adjudication can only be made by taking into account the specific context of a populist decision or practice. The final part examines the possible legal-institutional (court organization, lay participation, judicial formalism) and socio-political factors (quality of democracy, the impact of the media, and the ‘attention economy’ on courts) that have facilitated the emergence of judicial populism in the last two decades.

Keywords: Judicial populism; Courts and political populism; Adjudication under pressure; Courts and new media; Judicial responsiveness; Adjudication in the 21st century (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
ISBN: 9781788978736
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