Between Scylla and Charybdis – Judicial Independence and Accountability in the Populist Era

International courts bear today the burden of having to frequently examine judges’ complaints from different states and seek to set appropriate standards to uphold the fundamental principles of democracy. In words of the Former President of the President of the Constitutional Tribunal of Poland Andrzej Rzeplinski, “the less heroism a specific system of law or a social system demands of a judge, the better are both this law and this system”. Unfortunately it appears that we live in the era of “judicial heroism”. Whilst in previous times the ECtHR mostly dealt with procedural dimension of judicial accountability – as a prerequisite to judicial independence -, nowadays, more and more, we have to turn to its political and ethical dimensions. Although judicial independence does not amount to a free will and the judicial power must be held accountable, this has nothing to do with the temptation to punish a judge for a "wrong" decision. The paper analyses cases related to grounds for holding a judge liable, given that independence and accountability of judges are merely two sides of one coin.