Courts Under Scrutiny: Judges and Democracy

Should judges be indifferent to the pressures of time? The past decade has been one of moral and professional reckoning for many judiciaries that faced unprecedented pressures, defiance, verbal attacks, smear campaigns sponsored by governing parties, and threats. Once expected to embody neutrality and restraint, many judges have been thrust into roles they never envisioned—public speakers, guardians of democracy, and dissidents mobilising (in) the streets. This shift has raised fundamental questions: Should judges remain silent in the face of political encroachment and trust in institutional safeguards? Or must they step outside the courtroom, resisting through activism, media engagement, and transnational alliances?

• Are judges the guardians of democracy?
• Who are their key allies?
• Who is their audience?
• Does the public care about resistance?
• What happens to judges once they return back to the courtroom?

Richard W. Clary, who will moderate the discussion, is a Lecturer on Law at Harvard Law School and a Fellow of the Oxford Global Society. He earned his J.D. magna cum laude from Harvard Law School and his B.A. magna cum laude from Amherst College, and began his legal career as a law clerk to Justice Thurgood Marshall on the US Supreme Court. He practised law for 40 years at Cravath, Swaine & Moore LLP in New York City, where he served as a Partner for 35 years, including roles as Managing Partner and Head of Litigation, before retiring in 2020. He has also held leadership roles in the New York City Bar Association and the Legal Aid Society, and has contributed to the Putney Debates, co-editing Democracy in Crisis? The Putney Debates 2023 (Bloomsbury, 2025).

Lisa Hilbink is Professor of Political Science at Aix-Marseille University, with extensive expertise in law, justice, and democracy across different political systems, particularly in Latin America and Iberia. Her work includes numerous peer-reviewed journal articles and an award-winning book, Judges beyond Politics in Democracy and Dictatorship: Lessons from Chile (Cambridge University Press, 2007). Her current research focuses on the causes and consequences of judicial behaviour for democracy, as well as public perceptions of justice institutions and their impact on access to justice. She has also recently co-edited a symposium on judicial populism.

Katarína Šipulová is an Associate Professor in Political Science at the Judicial Studies Institute of Masaryk University and a 2024/2025 ReConstitution Fellow. She completed her PhD in European Studies at Masaryk University and an M.St. in Socio-Legal Research at the University of Oxford. Her research centres on judicial resistance and democracy, particularly in Central and Eastern Europe. She is actively involved in major research projects such as INFINITY (Informal Judicial Institutions and Democratic Decay) and NET-ROL (Networks and the Rule of Law), where she leads a work package on judicial and prosecutorial autonomy, and has published widely in leading journals.

Agnieszka Kubal is Associate Professor at the Centre for Socio-Legal Studies at the University of Oxford and a Research Fellow at Green Templeton College. She completed her DPhil at Oxford and has held positions at the International Migration Institute, the Davis Center at Harvard, and UCL’s School of Slavonic and East European Studies. She is an interdisciplinary socio-legal scholar focusing on Central and Eastern Europe and Russia, and currently serves as Principal Investigator on a major UKRI/ERC-funded project (2022–2027) examining human rights mobilisation in the region.

Tom Daly is Professor at Melbourne Law School and Director of the digital research platform Demoptimism. His research spans public law and political science, focusing on democratic crisis and renewal, constitutional design, and the role of state and non-state actors in safeguarding democracy. His recent work includes publications on constitutional repair and responses to democratic backsliding, as well as a 2025 policy report for International IDEA on designing resilient institutions. He has extensive international policy experience across regions including Asia, the Middle East, and Central Asia.