is defended everywhere in principle and constructed very differently in practice.
The variable that matters most is not the text of a constitution but the method of .
Where a government appoints judges directly, independence depends on and on the judges themselves.
Conventions of that kind can hold for a century and can be discarded in a single parliamentary session.
, which place in the hands of a body of judges and lawyers, answer that risk and create another.
A profession that selects its own successors reproduces itself, including its social composition and its assumptions.
Several countries have responded with mixed panels and published criteria, which reduce both problems without removing either.
Security of is the second pillar and is easier to state than to protect.
Removing a judge is difficult in most systems; moving one, retiring one early or changing a court's is not.
Recent constitutional conflicts in several democracies proceeded entirely through such lawful means.
No provision was breached, and the composition of the highest court changed within two years.
This is why observers now watch procedural rather than dramatic declarations.
An adjustment to a retirement age or to the number of seats on a bench carries more information than a speech.
Independence, however, is not the same as , and the tension between them is genuine.
A judiciary that answers to nobody can be arbitrary, slow or captured by its own professional interests.
The answer that works is transparency rather than control: published reasons, open hearings and accessible statistics on delay.
Those measures let the public judge the judiciary without giving any institution power over an individual case.
The distinction between judging a system and interfering in a case is the whole of the subject.