19 - Judicial Mobilities

Summary

Travel is a defining feature of foreign judging. This chapter uses the lens of mobility to examine the phenomenon of foreign judging in eight Pacific states: Fiji, Kiribati, Nauru, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tonga, Tuvalu and Vanuatu. It adopts a methodology that centres on the movement of judges by combining quantitative analysis with qualitative description of the personal experiences of individual judges. The focus on mobility highlights three aspects of foreign judging in the Pacific: first, the modalities of travel, that is, the ways and means by which foreigners come to sit as judges on Pacific courts and their experiences of arrival, stay and return; second, who travels to sit as a judge and the meanings that are attached to movement to, from and within the Pacific; and third, potential impediments to judges’ travel. The analysis shows how mobility complicates presumptions about foreignness by blurring the boundaries between binary concepts such as foreign and local, as well as presumptions about judging by testing some of the qualities of judicial office that support judicial independence.