Hierarchies of Justice

After reviewing the multiple ways hierarchy permeates adjudication worldwide, this chapter explores the possible rationales for this institutional feature and the ways it impacts judicial behaviour on both lower and upper courts. From a comparative perspective, hierarchies are shown to have diverse possible functions, each drawing on varying understandings of the social and political roles of adjudication, and each producing varying judicial behaviour traits. The inherent tension between independence and hierarchy reveals that judicial power can flow in different ways, and that the design of hierarchies of justice may sometimes allow for the challenging and even the inverting of apparent power structures. This leads to a consideration of possible new avenues for the exploration of hierarchy in adjudication: drawing on insights from social network analysis, the chapter suggests recasting courts and judges as interconnected discursive units, seeking mainly to learn from ‘mistakes’, rather that eliminate them.