This article investigates the relationship between trust, security and the judiciary in Romania. Following the democratic transition and European Union (EU) membership, the Romanian legal system faced two crucial tasks: dealing with the past through means of transitional justice, such as lustration (vetting), and dealing with the future through anti-corruption measures that were to strengthen the rule of law and enable economic development. In dealing with both tasks, the Romanian judiciary was essential in making far-reaching decisions whose consequences went far beyond the legal system. In this article, the author examines some of the implications of the decisions in these two areas for the levels of trust within the judiciary and trust in the judiciary.

Most Latin American judiciaries experience low levels of public trust, and many high courts in the region suffer attacks from political actors. Such interference constitutes a serious contestation of judicial independence. The literature suggests that courts can defend against such attacks by building alliances with the broader public. Public trust is central to build such alliances. Courts may increase trust through an opening to the public. Latin American constitutional and supreme courts have been pioneering in engaging with the public through a variety of means. Comparing globally, they can be considered the most active ones in using social media for presenting and promoting their work. This article investigates how the behaviour of Latin American high courts in Twitter (nowadays ‘X’) is shaped by the different levels of trust and political attacks experienced by the courts. It distinguishes between an informational, an educational and a self-promotional purpose of a court’s use of Twitter. It uses data from Latinobarómetro, V-Dem, as well as an original dataset of tweets by Latin American high courts to assess the respective behaviour on Twitter. The analysis of six cases (Colombia, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Mexico, Paraguay, Uruguay) shows that courts with lower levels of trust tend to be more active in social media than courts with higher levels of trust and that the former tend to produce more self-promotional or educational content than purely informational one. Regarding the level of political attacks, no clear effects on the court behaviour on Twitter were identified.

This article explores reasoned orders issued by the Court of Justice (the Court) to reply to preliminary references of the national courts in the procedure for a preliminary ruling of Article 267 TFEU. Reasoned orders allow the Court to reply in a swift manner to preliminary references that raise no doubts. This article looks at the use of reasoned orders as proxies of trust and, thus, contributes to the research on trust in a multilevel judicial system. To this end, it analyses all Article 99 orders issued by the Court of Justice during two full years (2020 and 2021). The article uses this qualitative analysis to reflect on the Court’s trust on its national counterparts, and of the latter in the Court, and provide suggestions on how to use these orders to enhance reciprocal trust.

Trust is an essential prerequisite for cooperation between EU Member States and EU institutions and between the Member States. This is especially evident in the Area of Freedom, Security and Justice (AFSJ). It is undisputable that national courts play a pivotal role in the EU legal order and that their role has become increasingly more prominent in the AFSJ, especially when it comes to the balancing of protection of fundamental rights with the principle of mutual trust. It is in this field that it has become clear that the quality of the rule of law in one EU Member State has strong implications and affects the rule of law and fundamental rights protection in other Member States. In this context, Polish judges sent numerous preliminary references asking the ECJ whether judicial independence is still guaranteed in Poland. Similarly, national courts in other Member States, such as the Netherlands or Ireland, referred multiple questions to Luxembourg in essence asking various times whether the automaticity required by the principle of mutual trust can be maintained in the EU in the light of rule-of-law backsliding and erosion of judicial independence. In this article two different dimensions of trust – that is, the principle of mutual trust and the trust of national courts in the ECJ – are combined to address the question of the extent to which national courts trust the ECJ in relation to preliminary rulings that affect the operation of the principle of mutual trust with respect to the independence of the judiciary.

The year 2015 marked a profound turn in Poland’s constitutional landscape. Under PiS rule, the country experienced the implementation of highly controversial reforms reorganising the Constitutional Tribunal, Supreme Court and, eventually, the judiciary as a whole. Despite domestic protests and international criticism, for several years the then-ruling party managed to maintain public support, most ostensibly reflected in the 2019 election’s results. The situation radically changed in late 2020, when PiS experienced a 10-point drop in ratings and, importantly, never managed to regain their popularity levels. From that juncture, one could observe one more phenomenon – a rapid decrease in support and trust in the then-already-reorganised Constitutional Tribunal. These shifts in societal attitudes most vividly coincided with one significant event: the Tribunal’s ruling on the termination of pregnancy on the ground of fatal foetal abnormality. Against this background, this article explores a relatively overlooked topic of trust dynamics within hybrid regimes. By using the Polish Tribunal as a testing ground, it reflects on the variability of public trust under PiS rule. By comparing two case studies – the capture of the Tribunal (2015-2016) and 2020 ruling on pregnancy termination grounds – we investigate how PiS tried to manipulate trust and distrust in judiciary in general and in the Tribunal in particular. In this vein, we apply McKnight and Chervany’s conceptualisation. Secondly, we discuss how the public trust in the Tribunal actually shifted and the factors that might have influenced that change, contrary to the former rulers’ wishes.

The steady reliance on algorithmic and artificial intelligence (AI) systems within judicial proceedings poses several risks to fundamental rights, including the judicial duty to state reasons. The judicial duty to state reasons refers to the obligation of judges to provide reasons whenever they rule in a case. Although this duty constitutes an essential component for the rule of law and the right to a fair trial, and pursues important normative goals, it has not been studied much – let alone in the age of automation. Through the analysis of the case study of generative AI systems assisting judges in their legal drafting, this article aims to explore how and to what extent such systems can affect the judicial duty to state reasons. To this end, the article focuses on the impact of generative AI systems on one of the underlying normative values of this duty, notably the legitimacy of judicial decision-making. The assessment shows that while generative AI systems can strengthen the legitimacy of judicial decision-making and thereby the judicial duty to state reasons, they simultaneously impede it in various ways. The article therefore briefly reflects on possible avenues to uphold the judicial duty to state reasons in the age of automation. It highlights the importance of AI literacy and explores the potential of enhanced transparency, accountability and legitimacy through a more robust duty to state reasons, while also acknowledging the limits of such approaches.