CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2025
| Author | Miljojkovic, Teodora |
|---|---|
| Title | Abuse Of Judicial Appointments And Dismissals: A Rule Of Law Framework |
| Summary | This thesis develops a normative and analytical framework for evaluating political interference with judicial appointments and dismissals through the lens of a teleological conception of the rule of law. Rather than prescribing fixed thresholds for legitimate institutional reform, it seeks to enrich rule of law theory by offering typological tools to assess whether state actions affecting the judiciary adhere to the justificatory commitments at the heart of the rule of law. On this account, legality is treated as a necessary but insufficient condition: public power must also be exercised in a manner that is reasoned, transparent, and capable of withstanding public scrutiny. The thesis constructs typologies of abusive practices that reveal how formal legal procedures may be repurposed to achieve politically instrumental ends. These classificatory devices—developed through a combination of theoretical analysis and comparative inquiry—enable a more refined evaluation of institutional reforms that comply with procedural legality but subvert the underlying normative aims of the rule of law. Emphasis is placed on patterns of interference that exploit legal form while eroding the substantive guarantees of judicial independence. Special attention is devoted to the figure of the inherited judge, whose continued tenure in moments of political transition exposes a fundamental paradox: while judicial permanence safeguards against arbitrary power, it may also provoke attempts at removal in the name of democratic renewal or systemic reform. The thesis treats such tensions not as anomalies but as illustrative of broader structural dilemmas in constitutional democracies. Through the development of a justification-based evaluative lens and its context-sensitive typological analysis, the thesis contributes to a more nuanced vocabulary for identifying and assessing rule of law violations. It moves beyond formalist approaches by foregrounding the justificatory ethos that must accompany institutional change, and by clarifying how ostensibly lawful reforms may amount to disguised efforts at judicial capture. In doing so, the study makes both conceptual and methodological contributions to contemporary debates on judicial independence, democratic backsliding, and the normative resilience of the rule of law. |
| Supervisor | Sajó, András |
| Department | Legal Studies PhD |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2025/miljojkovic_teodora.pdf |
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