Judges' sense of entitlement: Bring judiciary back to earth

THE details of the relationship between the Government and the judiciary may be getting more airtime than our judges might like.

The worldview revealed is baffling. The sense of entitlement would be amusing if it was not Romanov in ambition and disdain.

Correspondence from 2015 shows the judiciary expected taxpayers to pay the legal costs of judges facing misconduct allegations.

That suggestion was rejected but the Government decided, after deliberations on the 20-years-in-the-making Judicial Council Bill 2017, that misconduct hearings should be held in private and that conclusions also remain private — even if allegations are upheld.

This hiding away is profoundly and dangerously anti-democratic. That sense of difference, of being beyond democratic accountability, is underlined in the sanctions provided.

Anyone disclosing evidence or the ruling of a misconduct hearing might face a year in prison or a €5,000 fine. Justice would indeed be blind.

Today we report that some judges are “struggling to get by” on six-figure salaries. Association of Judges president George Birmingham warned that “there are members... who can ill afford to wait” for pay cuts to be reversed.

The establishment is in retreat all around the world because of a growing sense of inequity and uncontrollable elites accountable to nobody. Our judges seem determined to make their contribution to that process. They should be stopped.