Political Trust, Public Justification, and Judicial Office

Abstract This chapter examines the place of the judiciary in good government. It does so at a fraught moment: one in which there are high reported levels of generalized social distrust in judges. In this chapter, I argue that some peculiar tendencies of American legal thought have primed the public for toxic distrust of judges. I also argue, against the current, that trust-based accounts of good government can and should inform our understanding of judicial role morality. I argue that judges hold public office as a matter of political trust and are expected to act in a genuinely representative way by advancing public purposes that are constitutive of their offices. I also argue that judges may prove worthy of the public’s trust through demonstration of judicial virtue, by evincing plain commitment to the impartial pursuit of public purposes immanent in the law, and by fostering a healthy culture of public justification.