In the traditional iconography, Justice wears a blindfold. When we come before her, she must listen to our arguments, but not see us. But should justice also wear a mask, so that we do not see her face? This is the question raised by a report by Caroline Fleuriot for Dalloz Actualité. Ms. Fleuriot writes that the French judges’ union is demanding their names be removed from their decisions, in anticipation of these decisions being made freely available online ― although a number of judges who she quotes are opposed to this idea. And this demand might, of course, seem rather astonishing to us in the common law world. But then again, as Peter McCormick’s recent articles on decisions “by the Court” issued by the Supreme Court of Canada, about which I blogged here, suggest, the concept of judicial anonymity is not entirely foreign to us either. I think the French proposal is a good occasion to further our reflection on it.
As best I understand Ms. Fleuriot’s report, the French judges make two arguments in favour of removing their names from their decisions. They say, first, that failing to do so would encourage increased criticism and even formal complaints aimed at judges personally rather than at their decisions, potentially compromising trial fairness. Second, it would allow the performance of each individual judge to be assessed, including “to identify judges who do not issue decisions that follow the wishes of the government of the day”.
To some extent,these justifications ring hollow. In the common law world, the authors of judicial decisions are routinely identified, and while this does open the door to sometimes personal, and occasionally outright vicious and distasteful criticism, and occasionally formal complaints, this is not generally seen as imperilling judicial independence or impartiality. Neither is the existence of statistics about the decisions of individual judges, even though such statistics are routinely (at least in the United States) pressed in the service of attaching rather crude and sometimes unfair ideological labels to members of the judiciary.
To be sure, I am not at all an expert on the French judiciary; I do not know how strong the protections for judicial independence are in France. If they are much weaker than in countries such as Canada, the United Kingdom, or the United States (in the federal judiciary), perhaps the judges’ union’s concerns are more justified. But if the French judiciary is sufficiently independent now, its worries seem rather overblown, if they are sincere. Indeed, one might wonder whether what is really going on is not simply an attempt to escape criticism ― whether from the government or from parties and civil society.
That said, if we are indeed right be skeptical of the French judges’ seemingly self-serving claims, we should also ― as prof. McCormick urges us ― take a hard look at our own. The Supreme Court is in the habit of issuing decisions signed by “the Court”, without attribution to one author (or several authors, as is increasingly common). Insofar as there is a common thread to these decisions, it is that many (although by no means all) of them involve potential confrontations between the Supreme Court and either a government, whether federal (say l’Affaire Nadon, Reference re Supreme Court Act, ss. 5 and 6, 2014 SCC 21, [2014] 1 S.C.R. 433) or provincial (say Quebec (Attorney-General) v Blaikie, [1979] 2 SCR 1016), whether on issues concerning the judiciary or on other politically salient topics, from the death penalty to language rights. In these cases, the Supreme Court may well be concerned, rightly or wrongly ― often wrongly, I suspect ― about deflecting criticism from its individual members and even with preserving its independence.
Admittedly there are important differences between this practice and that which the French judges’ union is looking to institute. In France, appellate decisions (rendered by multi-member panels) already are anonymous in the sense that “by the court” decisions are: they do not identify an individual author, though first instance decisions rendered by a single judge necessarily are not. If I understand the point of the judges’ union’s demands correctly, so far as appellate courts are concerned, they seek to hide the composition of the panels, as well as the identity of the actual authors of the decision. When the Supreme Court (or, on occasion, provincial courts of appeal) issue “by the court” decisions, we are always told who was on the panel. And of course, the practice of “by the court” decisions is quantitatively marginal ― although qualitatively significant ― one. On average, the Supreme Court issues only one or two decisions a year without attribution.
Indeed, these differences are a good starting point in thinking about whether the anonymity of judicial decisions is a problem, as prof. McCormick argues it is, and as I am now inclined to think too. Does it matter that we know the composition of the panels that render unattributed decisions? I suppose some information is better than none. And of course, in a very important sense, judges should be accountable, or amenable to criticism, not just for the decisions they happen to write, but also for those with which they agree ― at least in the common law world, where concurring and dissenting is (almost) always possible, if sometimes unpopular with one’s colleagues on the bench. Still, the composition of the panel ― especially a large panel at the Supreme Court ― seems insufficient. Does it matter whether only a few, or many, or all decisions are unattributed? I think it does. If the practice of “by the Court” decisions were really sporadic (and it is now a bit more than that), it would arguably matter very little. If it were clearly reserved for decisions where the Courts feel the very separation of powers, or indeed the future of the country, is at stake (as the Supreme Court may have felt in, say Canada (Prime Minister) v. Khadr, 2010 SCC 3, [2010] 1 SCR 44, and in Reference re Secession of Quebec, [1998] 2 SCR 217), it would be more readily understandable. But it is neither, and as prof. McCormick shows, it is difficult to establish a coherent narrative that would account for all of the “by the court” decisions.
Thus it may well be that the French judges’ proposal is, from our standpoint, not exactly an entirely alien idea, but rather something like a reductio ad absurdum of our own Supreme Court’s practice. It is possible to criticize the former and accept the latter, of course. But perhaps we should not be too quick to do so. Whatever we might think of justice in robes, justice in masks does not seem like a very attractive ideal.
H/t: Pierre Trudel
Double Aspect 
I agree with you, and would add another reason to reject anonymity: it erases an important data point for legal scholars, especially historians of the law. While the study of a judge’s oeuvre may be turned towards cynical ends, it certainly does not have to be. There are plenty of narratives that a historian may want to make, plenty of links that she may want to trace between judges and the world around them, as well as judges between each other. One could, for example, contrast a trial judge’s oeuvre at first instance with her oeuvre on an appellate court. Or one could contrast the oeuvre of two trial judges with their common oeuvre sitting on an appellate panel. What is known of a judge’s biographical background could be brought into an analysis of her oeuvre. And so on…
Such interesting and valid avenues of research would be preempted by judicial anonymity. The doctrinal interest of such research may not be readily evident, but it is certainly interest if one sees value in understanding the law as a human endeavour, one with its own “biography.”
Well, I don’t think that courts are under much of an obligation to facilitate scholarship. Or, at least, I think that if anonymous decisions were otherwise a good thing on balance, any such obligation would not be enough to tip the scales.
I think there are other rationales for why the SCC issues judgment from the Court. It may be that all members of the Court have, to some extent, contributed to the decision. The decision does not represent the particular reasoning of one judge or group of judges. Instead, the judgment represents the collaborative reasoning of the bench as a whole. It may also be that the judges wish for the decision to be depersonalized — as representing the view of the Court as a whole rather than of any of its members. I think this reflects a different purpose and motivation than why (some) French judges wish to anonymize their judgments.
Prof. McCormick considers the possibility of “by the court” judgments being genuine collective products in his Dal LJ paper, and rejects it as both unsupported by his linguistic analysis (which points to one or two likely authors for most decisions) and also by common sense (have you tried writing a coherent text as part of a group of nine?). There may (or may not) be exceptions, but it seems very likely that these decisions are mostly written by one or two judges, just like those whose authors are revealed.
As for wishing to present a decision as representing the view of the court, the question is, why? It not considered generally necessary for unanimous decisions (beyond, that is, saying that “the judgment of the Court was delivered by X”); why is it ever?