New Book by Anna Dziedzic: Foreign Judges in the Pacific (Hart Publishing)

Foreign Judges in the Pacific
Anna Dziedzic (Global Academic Fellow)
Hart Publishing

Published in 2021

Book Description: This book explores the use of foreign judges on courts of constitutional jurisdiction in 9 Pacific states: Fiji, Kiribati, Nauru, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tonga, Tuvalu and Vanuatu. We often assume that the judges sitting on domestic courts will be citizens. However across the island states of the Pacific, over three-quarters of all judges are foreign judges who regularly hear cases of constitutional, legal and social importance. This has implications for constitutional adjudication, judicial independence and the representative qualities of judges and judiciaries. Drawing together detailed empirical research, legal analysis and constitutional theory, it traces how foreign judges bring different dimensions of knowledge to bear on adjudication, face distinctive burdens on their independence, and hold only an attenuated connection to the state and its people. It shows how foreign judges have come to be understood as representatives of a transnational profession, with its own transferrable judicial skills and values. Foreign Judges in the Pacific sheds light on the widespread but often unarticulated assumptions about the significance of nationality to the functions and qualities of constitutional judges. It shows how the nationality of judges matters, not only for the legitimacy and effectiveness of the Pacific courts that use foreign judges, but for legal and theoretical scholarship on courts and judging.

Dr Anna Dziedzic on The Making and Unmaking of a Constitutional Crisis in Samoa (verfassungsblog)

"The Making and Unmaking of a Constitutional Crisis in Samoa"

Dr Anna Dziedzic

verfassungsblog: On Matters Conventional

Published in 2021

Introduction: Politics in the Pacific island state of Samoa rarely attract international attention. Last week, however, Samoa grabbed global headlines as two leaders each claimed the Prime Ministership after a closely contested election. The constitutional issues surrounding this crises are complex and growing in number by the day. They concern dealing with a hung parliament, the powers and duties of various constitutional officials, the independence and administration of the judiciary, the representation and treatment of women in public office, and the question of whether it may be permissible to contravene constitutional provisions in order to uphold and maintain the constitutional system of government. This post focuses on the last of these issues and how Samoa’s courts, and potentially customary institutions, might be able to chart a path out of the constitutional crisis. Click here to read the full text.

Anna Dziedzic on Foreign Judges: Pacific Practice and Global Insights (Commonwealth Judicial Journal)

“Foreign judges: Pacific practice and global insights” 

Anna Dziedzic

Commonwealth Judicial Journal

2019, Volume 24, Issue 2, pp. 26-29

Abstract: The use of foreign judges is an exceptional phenomenon in world experience. That judges, particularly on a state’s highest courts, will be citizens is often taken for granted in academic and practice-oriented literature on judging. However, foreign – or non-citizen – judges sit on domestic courts in over 30 jurisdictions across the world. Given the majority of these jurisdictions are Commonwealth states in Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific, readers of the Commonwealth Judicial Journal might be one of the rare audiences for whom the use of foreign judges is a familiar practice. The use of foreign judges is a largely under-studied phenomenon. It raises a host of practical and theoretical questions. Just how does foreign judging work in practice? How might the constitutional and judicial systems of states accommodate the use of foreign judges? To what extent, if at all, does the nationality of the judges on a domestic court matter? This short article outlines some responses to these questions, drawing on insights from the practice of foreign judging in Pacific island states.  The paper can be downloaded from SSRN.