Judicial Autonomy Quotes
In 2002 the corrupt Indonesian Courts ruled that a very solvent Canadian company Manulife was bankrupt so that others could get control. The international financial and political community wanted the Indonesian government to intervene and reverse the rulings, but historically the courts had no independence and had been tools of the government.
This was the most eloquent acknowledgement of the import and difficult job of the Federal Disctrict Judges--the backbone of the Federal Judiciary who are oftetn over looked in favor of the appellate judges and Supreme Court judges who deal with cases as a group and always have the privelege of reviewing and second guessing the work of the district judges who first had to decide the issue on way or the other.
The government of Pakistan regarded this as seditious. The Government can fire judges at will and the military has the right to convene its own courts and try Pakistani civilians for certain alleged crimes by removing their cases from the civilian courts. Even when a Pakistani judge is not intimidated by the government or the military, the Islamic extremist fanatics often assassinate any public official who any one of thousands of fanatics feels is anti-Islamic.
