Piotrowski Ryszard, Judges and European Democracies

1. Independent courts and independent judges play a role which is hard to overestimate but easy to ignore in substantiating a unique project: the system, developed in Western Europe and North America, which restricts the power of the majority through human rights, also known as liberal democracy. The foundation of liberal democracy is the rule of law, a deeply European concept, which rests on Plato’s conclusion: ‘that state in which the law is subject and has no authority, I perceive to be on the highway to ruin’ whereas ‘the state in which the law is above the rulers, and the rulers are the inferiors of the law, has salvation, and every blessing which the Gods can confer’ (Laws, Book IV).

The idea of Europe is older than the oldest written constitutions. It is closely linked with the development of the concept of the constitution. The rule of law can be seen as a ‘European project’ in the meaning deployed by Homer, who puts people ‘ruled by law’ made in assemblies in opposition to...