The Grammar of Bias: Judicial Impartiality in European Legal Systems

The concept of judicial objectivity is a cornerstone of modern legal systems. This article discusses the interplay between the lexical uses of the concept of judicial objectivity in cases that review the judicial impartiality of the court. The data for this project is retrieved from a large sample of cases (over eight hundred decisions) from Hungary, Italy, Lithuania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain and the UK. The analysis of the data shows that in the case of alleged judicial bias, the concept of objectivity is referred to in order to justify a series of judicial activities (e.g. the assessment of procedures adopted by an allegedly biased court; the existence of subjective interest in the case). In particular, the study provides a strong indication of what Legrand called ‘pre-judices’, which are the cultural aspects that are embedded in the process of the professional socialisation of each legal system. © 2016, Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht.