Abstract

With the adoption of the Guidelines concerning Judicial Conduct and Ethics in February of 2022, the new system of judicial discipline established by the 2019 Judicial Council Act came into full force in Ireland. The establishment of a Judicial Conduct Committee and the new procedure for disciplining judges mark a shift from a rather informal system where the most salient provision was the constitutional procedure for the parliamentary removal of a judge. At the same time, the new framework contains elements of continuity with Ireland’s informal tradition in judicial discipline, since the definition of judicial standards of conduct does not seem to amount to an instance of genuine standardization. By comparing Ireland and Italy’s systems for judicial discipline, the Essay aims at demonstrating that standardization is a less momentous policy in combating judicial misconduct than the fine-tuned allocation of authority over judicial discipline. Moreover, it is further contended that, while a parliamentary power to remove misbehaving judges seems at variance with Italy’s constitutional tradition and recent political developments, the complaints procedure of the Judicial Council Act could beneficially be transplanted into the Italian legal framework.