Such being the importance of the judiciary, it is necessary to know some basic principles of almost universal application on which modem justice rests.
The first, of course, is that there is in every State one judicial system, and one law, both the creation of the State, and administered by judges and other officials appointed for that purpose.
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Every member of the community is subject to that law, and is entitled to its protection. It means that law must apply to all men as men and equal protection of life for everyone under the law and equal penalties for everyone violating it.
Justice must, therefore, be administered strictly according to law and no one may be punished for any offence, which the law does not consider an offence. Punishment must only be what the law prescribes for a particular offence and it must always remain the same for the same kind of offence.
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The object of punishment is not vengeance, but the protection of society from the criminal and those who may imitate him. Also independence of the judiciary is practically a universally accepted principle of modern justice. It is a crime for the judges to receive “a bribe or for anybody to offer them one, or to threaten them, or bring any kind of pressure to bear on them.
It is also wrong for the government to interfere, by trying to secure condemnation or acquittals; verdicts must be given in accordance with the facts and with the law governing the case, and not to suit the desires of politicians or other influential persons.”
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This means that in modem civilised life the character, means and methods of justice raise or debase a nation in the estimation of other people. Laski expresses the same idea rather emphatically when he says, “When we know how a nation-State dispenses justice, we know with some exactness the moral character to which it can pretend.”
Sidgwick, too, had said that “in determining a nation’s rank in political civilisation, no test is more decisive than the degree in which justice, as defined by law, is actually realised in its judicial administration, both as between one private citizen and another, and as between private citizens and members of the government.”