Revista da EMERJ - V. 21 - N. 3 - Setembro/Dezembro - 2019 - Tomo 1

61  R. EMERJ, Rio de Janeiro, v. 21, n. 3, t. 1, p. 55-71, set.-dez., 2019  TOMO 1 political expectations or even party lines. The other is the temptation to adjudicate according to one’s own political preferences or ideas of what is just and unjust rather than following constitutional standards. The constitutional guarantee of judicial independence protects judges against politics, but it does not protect the constitutional system and society against judges who, for other reasons than direct political pressure, are willing to disobey or distort the law. For these reasons, external independence must be accompanied by internal independence. The constitutional guarantee of judicial independence is not a personal privilege to decide at will, but a functional requirement. It enables judges to fulfil their function, namely to apply the law irrespectively of the interests and expectations of the parties to the litigation or powerful political or societal forces. It frees judges from extra-legal bonds, not to give them leeway in their decisions, but to enable them to decide according to the law. The reason for the independence from extra-legal bonds is to give full effect to the legal bonds to which judges are submitted. Submission to law is the necessary counterpart of judicial independence. As with external independence, precautions can also be taken for internal independence. However, since internal independence is largely a matter of professional ethics and individual character, the possibilities of the law are limited. Gross misbehaviour such as corruption can of course be outlawed and made a crime. Experience shows, however, that it is difficult to fight corruption within the judiciary when corruption is habitual among politicians and also in society. This seems to be a problem in a number of new democracies. It is likewise justified to criminalize perversion of justice, though it is not easy to clearly distinguish perversion of justice from false or questionable interpretation of the law. This is why convictions because of perversion of justice are rare. But criminalizing corruption and perversion of justice and removing judges from office who committed these crimes is not a violation of the independence of the judiciary. A more subtle misconduct is the willingness or pre-disposition to interpret the law in a way that is favourable to certain political views or to a party or a candidate for political office, either in general or in an individual case. This usually comes in the guise of legal argumentation that seeks to hide the fact that it is result-driven. This will not always occur intentionally.