Must One Indeed Imagine Sisyphus Happy? Recurring Judicial Accountability Rounds as Rule of Law Exceptions in Post-Communist Europe

Abstract The promise of cleansing judiciaries of judges who are unfit for democracy and rule of law paradigms has been central to judicial reforms for European post-communist countries approaching the Europe they imagined. Thrice already in the past 30 years, Central Eastern European (CEE) and Southeastern European countries (SEE) applied extraordinary accountability mechanisms for judges. The latter promised to be the exceptional and ultimate stretch for the judiciaries, a one-time necessary precondition for them to be able to transition out of the past and into the ‘fully fledged independent and accountable’ judiciary prescribed transnationally. From one round of judicial reforms to another, shaped by different requirements of transitional societies in Europe, judicial cleansing operations have returned to fix the same persisting problem of judicial integrity-building. This article aims to show these measures are not to be exclusively relied upon to instate sustainable independent and accountable courts, precisely because of the risks related to their extraordinary nature, their problematic rule of law exceptions, and the leeway for abuse they create in critical junctures as products and enablers of transition.