Opinion: How much is a judge (still) worth?

In a genuine democracy, justice should be the citizen's shield against the abuse of power, but in a world increasingly dominated by money, influence and backstage games, an uncomfortable question arises: "can a judge still be truly independent?", says former French ambassador and MP Laurent Dominati, in an article published on the website lesfrancais.press.

The cited source states that justice has a price, but asks what it is, in the context in which tens of millions of dollars have recently been spent on the election of a magistrate. In this regard, Laurent Dominati recalls that recently in the USA a campaign to elect a judge to the Supreme Court of Wisconsin cost almost 100 million dollars - an absolute record in American electoral history. However, the candidate supported by Elon Musk, a businessman who invested $25 million of his own funds, lost, which shows that money may not buy everything or that in American society the judiciary still resists temptation.

The cited source also shows that Honduras offers another example. A businessman who "invested" not only in banks and agriculture, but also in bribing judges, managed to avoid the courts for 25 years. That is until the regime that protected him collapsed. The judges disappeared, and his fortune was halved. In a country where even the son of the former president ends up in prison for drug trafficking, it becomes clear: judicial corruption is a huge stake.

Throughout history, the first duty of the sovereign was to judge. Today, justice should be the counterbalance to power - but, too often, it is transformed into an instrument of oppression, the article states, which states that in China, generals are sentenced by magistrates on the orders of President Xi Jinping and that in Turkey, President Erdogan sends his opponents to court (ed. - the most recent example is the mayor of Istanbul, Kemal Imamoglu). In Israel, the judicial system is being attacked from within, by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who is dissatisfied with the way the magistrates of the Supreme Court handle certain cases. According to Laurent Dominati, in the US, Donald Trump has pardoned over 2,500 people and is preparing to save tens or hundreds of thousands more businessmen with debts to the state, while his predecessor, Joe Biden, signed over 8,000 pardons. The gestures of the two seem like a kind of pardon letters against justice, because instead of criminals being imprisoned, they are being released en masse, the quoted source states.

In this global context, the judge should be impartial. But what happens when he sympathizes politically or participates in partisan movements? The European Court of Human Rights is categorical: any suspicion of bias must lead to withdrawal. Laurent Dominati clearly points out: "There is nothing more dangerous than a corrupt judge - except for the total absence of a judge" and specifies that, in the absence of justice, only violence and silence remain.

The quoted source also brought up the use of artificial intelligence in the judicial process, mentioning that lately there have been more and more cases in which AI drafts lawyers' pleadings and issues legal opinions, leaving only one step to take before it issues decisions. The former French ambassador shows that, if in the technical fields - fiscal, commercial, urban planning - an "artificial judge" could be faster, more coherent and more objective, in the criminal field the act of justice would be dehumanized if AI were to judge cases and pronounce court decisions. He mentions that in the current conditions, justice has every chance of becoming an algorithm, which would reincarnate in predictive databases the dream of the Byzantine emperor Justinian to codify all the laws of his time.

According to a recent report, Transparency International shows that 46% of the world's citizens believe that their judicial system is corrupt, and the most corrupt states from this point of view would be Venezuela, North Korea and Somalia, countries for which the source states that the question is no longer how much a judge is worth, but whether justice still exists or only mimics the existence of the law.

In the end, Laurent Dominati draws a bitter conclusion: "A judge is not worth much. Neither is justice", given that there are lawyers and tax advisors who earn more than magistrates and where competence is replaced by influence, and justice becomes a political weapon, which leads to the loss of legitimacy of the state.

The price of a judge? It can be tens of millions of dollars, as in the recent example in the USA, or it can be a simple revolt. But if the state is not built on justice, then it is a simple sandcastle and it is only a matter of time until it collapses.