According to Ginsgurg & Huq (2018), courts are one of the actors who can protect democracy from degeneration into an authoritarian or semi-authoritarian regime. In the last decade, experiences from Hungary and Poland illustrate that courts and judges can play a crucial role in democratic backsliding. On the one hand, they are a target of the efforts of ‘wannabe autocrats’, on the other hand, they can exercise some resistance that aims to deter backsliding efforts. Also, recent developments show that in democracies courts and judges have certain discretion in making sense of an idea of justice in the society, e.g. in cases dealing with freedom of speech.
Slovak judiciary presents an interesting case for the study of European judiciaries endangered by potential democratic backsliding efforts. Judiciary in Slovakia enjoys fairly high level of judicial self-governance which has been previously misused to capture judiciary from the inside. Recently, Slovak judiciary faced a series of corruption allegations and allegations connecting judiciary with politicians and organized crime, which were followed by a very hesitant reaction by the Slovak judges. Despite these shortcomings, Slovakia has not been considered as a case of democratic backsliding, and since Mečiar’s government in mid 1990s, Slovakia has not witnessed any systematic attacks on democratic institutions. On the other hand, some authors labelled Slovak democracy as “hollowed-out” (Bakke & Sitter 2020). In addition, Slovak democracy does not seem to be safe. In 2016, for the first time, a far-right extremist party ĽSNS entered Slovak parliament. Interestingly, in 2019, a former judge was elected for ĽSNS to be member of the European parliament. Parliamentary elections in 2020 were won by a populist movement OĽANO, which formed the government coalition with another populist party SME RODINA. The upcoming elections, which may take place this year, do not offer much relief for the concerns about the quality of Slovak democracy either.
In this paper, using semi-structured interviews, I examine how Slovak judges, both ate the Constitutional court and in ordinary judiciary, understand their role in the protection of democracy, how they think about the relationship between law and justice, and how they perceive their position in the Slovak society. The analysis focuses also on judges’ understanding of concepts crucial for proper conduct of judicial tasks in democratic societies, such as judicial independence or judicial accountability. The ultimate objective of the paper is to assess how prepared are Slovak judges to face potential attacks on democracy, or decaying trust and support of democratic institutions.
