Corruption and Transparency in the Judiciary

Yesterday’s NYT contained one more article on the advance of the Taliban in Pakistan. While it was disturbing to read, I couldn’t help but think that the Taliban, even in their unrelenting advancement, had one point: they were willing to bring about a transparent judicial system in Pakistan.

Now Pakistan may be far, far away from the world that we live in, and Taliban may be just another headline. But the fact remains that a transparent judiciary with integrity is by far the biggest cause for the economic and social development of a nation. The countries in the world that have the highest human rights achievment in the world also have corruption-free judiciary.

It may be easy to dismiss corruption in the judiciary as just a developing world phenomenon, but the UNDP estimated that a majority of the developed countries in the world too suffer from corrupt and non-transparent judiciaries.

We’ve all heard the news stories about the judge who was willing to imprison defendants for perks, or the judge who caved in to pressure from lobby groups. Fact is that a corrupt judiciary is as big a problem in the developed world as it is in the developing; only the size and extent of the corruption differs.

Our entire legal system rests on the integrity of the judiciary. By making the legislative above the executive, and by making the supreme court the highest echelon of power in the country (even the president can be impeached by the supreme court), we’ve transferred all power to the judiciary. Sure, within our system, the judges are accountable too. But corruption in the judiciary – even to the minor extent that it is prevalant – can be the termite that can bring down the whole system.