Courts Under Scrutiny: Judges and Democracy

Registration link:

https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/lxBC11VpS9yYx1t6fUsNQA

Participants:

Lisa Hilbink: Professor of Political Science, Aix-Marseille University, Faculté de
droit et de science politique, specialising in law, justice and democracy in polities,
with particular focus on Latin America and Iberia

Katarína Šipulová: Associate Professor, Judicial Studies Institute, Masaryk
University, expert on judicial resistance and democratisation in the CEE region; Fellow of the Oxford Global Society

Agnieszka Kubal: Associate Professor at the Centre for Socio-Legal Studies (CSLS), Law Faculty and a Research Fellow at Green Templeton College, Oxford University.

Tom Daly: Professor at Melbourne Law School and Director of the digital research platform Demoptimism. 

Richard W. Clary (moderator): Lecturer on Law at Harvard Law School, specialising in complex litigation, class action, and evidence; Fellow of the Oxford Global Society.

Description:

Should judges be indifferent to the pressures of time? The past decade has been one of moral
and professional reckoning for many judiciaries. 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? If they do, how can they resist
unprecedented interferences, political and public, in the independence of their decision-
making?

These dilemmas are not merely theoretical—recently, judges who stood up to unconstitutional
acts implemented across democratic countries faced unprecedented pressures, defiance,
verbal attacks, smear campaigns sponsored by governing parties, and interferences in their
career or personal life. Their reactions and resistance shape the fate of judicial institutions
and, by extension, the nature and resilience of democratic political systems.

Participant bios:

Lisa Hilbink is Professor of Political Science at Aix-Marseille University, Faculté de droit et de science politique. She has expertise in a wide range of issues related to law, justice, and democracy in polities around the world, with a particular focus on Latin America and Iberia. Her publications include peer-reviewed journal articles in outlets such as Comparative Political Studies, Comparative Politics, Law and Social Inquiry, Law and Society Review, Political Research Quarterly, and World Politics, numerous chapters in edited volumes, and an award-winning book, Judges beyond Politics in Democracy and Dictatorship: Lessons from Chile (Cambridge University Press, 2007). Her current work focuses on two themes: (1) the causes, nature, and consequences of judicial behaviour for democracy, and (2) the origins of public perceptions of justice institutions and their consequences for access to justice in the Americas. Most recently, she co-edited a symposium on judicial populism in Law & Social Inquiry.

Katarína Šipulová is an Associate Professor in Political Science at the Judicial Studies Institute, Masaryk University, a 2024/2025 ReConstitution Fellow, and a Fellow of the Oxford Global Society. She earned her PhD in European Studies at Masaryk University, and an MSt in Socio-Legal Research at the University of Oxford. Her research focuses on judicial resistance and democracy, particularly in the context of Central and Eastern Europe. She was a ReConstitution 2024/2025 Fellow and actively participates in the ERC-funded INFINITY (Informal Judicial Institutions and Democratic Decay) project, as well as NET-ROL (Networks and the Rule of Law: Uncovering Socio-Economic Outcomes), where she leads a work package on Judicial and Prosecutorial Autonomy. She has recently published in Law & Policy, Regulation and Governance, HJRL, I-CON, and EuConst. She has recently co-edited a special issue on Informal Judicial Institutions: Determinants of Democratic Decay? in the German Law Journal.

Agnieszka Kubal is Associate Professor at the Centre for Socio-Legal Studies (CSLS), Law Faculty and a Research Fellow at Green Templeton College, Oxford University. She completed her DPhil at University of Oxford (2011). Upon post-doctoral spells at International Migration Institute (Oxford), CSLS (Oxford) and Davis Centre for Russian and Eurasian Studies (Harvard), she was based at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies (SSEES) at UCL, where she held an Associate Professorship in Sociology. Agnieszka is an interdisciplinary socio-legal scholar with area studies interest in Central Eastern Europe and Russia. She is currently a Principal Investigator on an UKRI/ERC Starter Grant (2022-2027) ‘Who are the humans behind Human Rights in Eastern Europe and Russia?’ (HuRiEE). This five-year research (GBP 1.2 m) breaks new ground in studying human rights mobilisation as a window into the societies of Eastern Europe and Russia.

Richard W. Clary is a Lecturer on Law at the 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 for Justice Thurgood Marshall on the US Supreme Court. Mr Clary practised law for 40 years at Cravath, Swaine & Moore LLP in New York City, where he was a Partner for 35 years and served as a Managing Partner and as the Head of Litigation, retiring at the end of 2020. He served as a Vice President of the New York City Bar Association and a Vice Chair of the New York City Legal Aid Society. A regular contributor to the Putney Debates organised by OXGS, Mr Clary has authored several chapters across two related publications and co-edited Democracy in Crisis? The Putney Debates 2023 (Bloomsbury, 2025).

Tom Daly is a Professor at Melbourne Law School and Director of the digital research platform Demoptimism. His comparative research draws on public law and political science, focusing on: democratic crisis and renewal; the diverse roles of state and non-state constitutional guardians; and constitutional design and democratic resilience. Recent work addresses: (i) the challenge of repairing the damage caused by anti-democratic governments worldwide, including an article on ‘Constitutional Repair: A Comparative Theory’ in the American Journal of Comparative Law; and (ii) analysis of ‘new wave’ constitutional design as a response to democratic backsliding, including a Working Paper published in January 2026. His extensive policy experience includes a landmark 2025 report for International IDEA on Designing Resilient Institutions: Countering Democratic Backsliding in Asia, as well as projects in and on Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, Lebanon, Maldives, Palestine, Sri Lanka, Turkey, Uzbekistan, and the Pacific.