Foreign judges sit on domestic courts in over 50 jurisdictions across the world. The practice raises underexplored questions about the significance of foreignness and mobility to the judicial role. This chapter draws on the contributions to The Cambridge Handbook of Foreign Judges on Domestic Courts to set out a framework for analysing the phenomenon of foreign judging and its legitimacy and effectiveness. Drawing on various incidents of foreign judging, it disaggregates five rationales for the use of foreign judges on domestic courts: necessity, institution building, distance, expertise and reputation. It identifies size, the domestic legal system, and the degree of international involvement as factors that make some jurisdictions more receptive than others to foreign judges. The chapter canvasses the implications of foreign judging for the identity and role of the judge, judicial independence and accountability, and adjudication and the development of the law. The experiences of jurisdictions across the globe suggest that foreign judging is a diverse phenomenon which will continue to evolve in contemporary conditions of globalisation.

The Caribbean Community (CARICOM) has two regional court systems, the Eastern Caribbean Supreme Court and the Caribbean Court of Justice. A product of political and economic integration, each court has taken a different evolutionary path resulting in different constitutional arrangements, but neither make nationality a criterion for appointment to judicial office. This chapter considers the concept of ‘foreignness’ in relation to these two regional Caribbean courts. It draws on the results of structured interviews with judicial officers and attorneys from across the region to analyse perceptions about the significance of judges’ nationality to the quality of judging and public expectations. The findings suggest that – in the Caribbean context which is shaped by regionalism, small communities and the legacies of colonialism – nationality does not matter as much as the impartiality, competency, and efficiency of the judge.

In this set of reflections, Sir David Baragwanath, former Justice of the Court of Appeal of New Zealand, part-time President of the Court of Appeal of Samoa and Appellate Judge of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon in The Hague, considers some of the ways in which judges and lawyers situate themselves within the familiar and the foreign. He urges reflection on the challenge of the judicial oath to ‘do right to all manner of people after the laws and usages of this realm without fear, favour, affection or ill-will’, as enriched by the basic judicial precepts of modestie et audace – caution – and mains tremblantes – the need for care, sensitivity and humility – to control personal predilections and learn and comprehend the distinctive values that underlie what, to an outsider, is novel jurisprudence. Judges ought to strive for a ‘periscope’ approach, in order to penetrate the mists of their own education and experience and search for answers congruent with the values of the unfamiliar law or society illuminated by a vision of its highest standards.

The judges who served as members of the Colonial Legal Service, established in 1933, were part of a community that was built and sustained by the imaginations of officials in the Colonial Office and those who served in the colonies. The judges of the Colonial Legal Service were shaped by the uniformity of formalised recruitment and promotion policies that rewarded professional legal experience at the Bar rather than local knowledge. A colonial legal career was not necessarily limited to one colony or region and legal officers were frequently transferred. The high number of transfers partly explains judges’ attitudes towards the administration of justice, in particular the fact that they often remained wedded to English law. Colonial judges were defined by their backgrounds – personal, educational and professional – and by the roles they performed. This chapter discusses how these factors helped create a unique sense of identity within the Colonial Legal Service.