The judicial process should, ideally, be unaffected by political considerations. The judge should decide solely on the basis of the facts of the case and the governing law. A judge of integrity and ability will make every effort to decide the dispute solely in response to the facts and the law. Nevertheless in practice this estimable ideal is not easily realized.

Every judge is a prisoner of his or her own experience. Every judge, just as every man, sees with his own eyes. The judge sees the facts and applies the law to those facts with his own limited vision, a vision inevitably affected by his genetic endowment and environmental influences, his nationality, education, experience, not to speak of more evanescent factors such as his relations with his colleagues. Perfect objectivity is unattainable. Yet a sufficient objectivity is achievable as the workings of many courts have shown. If that were not so, presumably courts would not endure.

The institution of adjudication is entrenched in civilization. Yet in many if not most countries, it may not work well. Jan Paulsson, a leading international arbitrator and advocate, recently published a sobering, even searing, essay on “Enclaves of Justice” showing how dilatory or corrupt are courts in much of the world much of the time. Extra-legal factors, including what may loosely be called political factors, too often debase the judicial process.