There is a long tradition of foreign judges serving in Liechtenstein courts. Until 1918, the higher courts had their seat not in Liechtenstein but in Austria. The Constitution of 1921 required that all courts be situated in Liechtenstein, but also institutionalised the participation of foreign judges in Liechtenstein’s courts. Foreign judges are recruited exclusively from Austria and Switzerland, reflecting the strong influences that those legal systems have had on the development of Liechtenstein’s own laws and judicial system. This chapter places the use of foreign judges in the context of Liechtenstein’s history and economy before examining the role of foreign judges in Liechtenstein’s legal system. It shows how foreign judges have influenced and shaped the law, through the interpretation of received laws, the development of legal doctrine and the evolution of rights jurisprudence.

The introduction mirrors the volume’s overall structure. It begins with a review of the literature on post-2013 legal institutional reforms before turning to the context and content of procedural law changes and court reforms. The chapter then discusses the role of the Supreme People’s Court as an initiator of criminal procedure amendments and promoter of legal institutional reform. The most significant change in the judicial structure, which is caused by the introduction of the supervision commissions, is examined from the perspective of ongoing court reforms and the balance of power amongst the various actors within the judiciary. The introduction then turns to the criminal procedure law reforms enacted in 2012 and 2018, discussing the new mechanism of pretrial detention, the criminal justice reform goal of ‘trial-centredness’ and criminal reconciliation in public prosecution cases. As the contextual factors of criminal trials often have a decisive impact on the trial outcome, such factors as performance evaluations of courts and judges and media scrutiny of criminal cases are subsequently analysed. It concludes with a summary of the key issues and findings of the volume as a whole.

This chapter considers Burke’s most famous text in defence of party: Thoughts on the Cause of Present Discontent (1770). With political life having been essentially purged of Jacobitism, an unapologetic case for party was now possible. This party, posing as the Whig party, viewed itself as the protector of Britain’s Revolution Settlement and its mixed and balanced constitution in opposition to what was perceived as a revived Toryism supporting George III and his favourite Bute’s ‘court system’. Burke viewed men and measures as interlinked and believed that a party had to seek office and negotiate with the monarch as a corps. This was diametrically opposed to the earlier ‘not men, but measures’ slogan at the heart of John Brown’s writings and the Pittite patriot platform.