Judicial immunity

Judicial Immunity is a form of legal immunity which protects judges and others employed by the judiciary from lawsuits brought against them for official conduct in office.

For example, a judge may not be the subject of a libel suit for statements made about a criminal defendant during a trial. Nor may a judge's clerk be sued for negligence in failing to deliver materials to the judge.

The purpose of judicial immunity is twofold: it encourages judges to act in a fair and just manner, without regard to the possible extrinsic harms their acts may cause outside of the scope of their work and it protects government workers from harassment from those whose interests they might negatively affect.

Historically, judicial immunity was associated with the English common law idea that "the King can do no wrong." (Compare Sovereign immunity.) Judges, the King's delegates for dispensing justice, accordingly "ought not to be drawn into question for any supposed corruption [for this tends] to the slander of the justice of the King." Floyd & Barker, 12 Co. Rep. 23, 25, 77 Eng. Rep. 1305, 1307 (Star Chamber 1607).



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