Published online by Cambridge University Press: 13 August 2025
This bibliography collects sources on the independence and accountability of judges serving on international tribunals and domestic apex courts by focusing on selection, terms of service, and discipline and removal. It includes books, book chapters, and articles, primarily in English, with reference to some French-, German-, and Spanish-language materials. The ensuing text also discusses some logistical difficulties in compiling a bibliography on such a large topic, describes the contours of the subject matter, and concludes with some thoughts on the direction of the scholarship and the possible use of AI in international research such as this.
Thank you to Alexander Burdett and Christine George for their thoughtful comments and support of the project.
1 Annalee Hickman, Janet Kearney, and Kelly Leong, “Reference Work,” in Introduction to Law Librarianship, edited by Zanada Joyner and Cas Laskowski, Pressbooks, 2021 (describing annotated bibliographies and literature reviews as “primary aspects” of faculty work); Elizabeth Manriquez, Michelle J. Penn, Thomas “TJ” Striepe, and Kris Turner, “Faculty Services,” in Joyner and Laskowski, Introduction to Law Librarianship (discussing literature reviews for research as a common service for law library faculty); see Rosen, Nathan Aaron, “A Duty and a Joy: The Publication of Bibliographies by Librarians,” Legal Reference Services Quarterly 9, no. 1-2 (1989): 179–83CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
2 Although I was lucky to have an expert tell me what to look for in the literature, this is often not the case. When starting from scratch, encyclopedias or other relevant reference works in the field are usually the best place to begin. In preparing this bibliography, I reviewed most of the relevant entries in the Max Planck Encyclopedias of International Law and the Max Planck Encyclopedia of Comparative Constitutional Law; see Max Planck Encyclopedia of Public International Law, Oxford Public International Law, https://opil.ouplaw.com/home/mpil; Max Planck Encyclopedia of International Procedural Law, Oxford Public International Law, https://opil.ouplaw.com/home/mpil; Max Planck Encyclopedia of Comparative Constitutional Law, Oxford Public International Law, https://oxcon.ouplaw.com/home/mpeccol.
3 See Lundberg, Adrian, Fraschini, Nicola, and Aliani, Renata, “What Is Subjectivity? Scholarly Perspectives on the Elephant in the Room,” Quality & Quantity 57, no. 5 (2023): 4509–29CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
4 “Oxford Handbooks,” Oxford University Press, accessed May 5, 2025, https://global.oup.com/academic/content/series/o/oxford-handbooks-ohbk/?cc=us&lang=en&.
5 “NYU Libraries,” New York University Division of Libraries, accessed May 5, 2025, https://library.nyu.edu/; “NYU Law Library,” NYU School of Law, accessed May 5, 2025, https://www.law.nyu.edu/library.
6 “Databases,” New York University Division of Libraries, accessed May 5, 2025, https://guides.nyu.edu/az/databases; “Law Library A-Z Databases,” NYU School of Law, accessed May 5, 2025, https://nyulaw.libguides.com/az/databases.
7 “Google Scholar,” accessed May 5, 2025, https://scholar.google.com/.
8 See Britta Rehder, “What Is Political about Jurisprudence? Courts, Politics and Political Science in Europe and the United States,” MPIfG Discussion Paper 07/5, 2007, https://pure.mpg.de/rest/items/item_1233108_7/component/file_1233106/content.
9 A few starting points are the following: Peter, H.; Solomon, “Courts and Judges in Authoritarian Regimes,” World Politics 60, no. 1 (2007): 122–45Google Scholar; Graver, Hans Petter, “Judicial Independence Under Authoritarian Rule: An Institutional Approach to the Legal Tradition of the West,” Hague Journal on the Rule of Law 10, no. 2 (October 2018): 317–39CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
10 “DeepL Translate: The World’s Most Accurate Translator,” accessed May 6, 2025, https://www.deepl.com/translator.
11 Mary Miles Prince and Harvard Law Review Association, eds., The Bluebook®: A Uniform System of Citation®, 21st ed., The Harvard Law Review Association, 2020.
12 The Chicago Manual of Style, 18th ed., University of Chicago Press, 2024.
13 “Gemini,” accessed May 6, 2025, https://gemini.google.com; “ChatGPT,” accessed May 6, 2025, https://chatgpt.com. I used both for logistical reasons; both stopped processing about halfway through the inputted citations.
14 Which is not used in the current version of Chicago. See CMOS 14.30.
15 Photo on file with author.
