Democracy, technocracy, and the question of judicial (im)partiality

Contemporary societies are faced with a double relationship between the judiciary and politics: in the normative scope, impartiality appears as an assumption; in the descriptive scope, impartiality is not configured. This article analyzes this gap between the normative and descriptive scopes of the relationship between the judiciaryand politics in three moments: firstly, it presents the distinction between political judgments and judicial judgments elaborated by Nadia Urbinati; secondly, based on the work of Jeremy Waldron, it questions the thesis of judicial impartiality and presents his defense of a weak-form judicial review model; thirdly, also based on Waldron’s work,it shows how the political performance of the judiciary affects the ideal of the rule of law.