The evolution of judicial independence
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Judicial independence developed as reformers argued that courts could not deliver impartial justice if judges served purely at the pleasure of a ruler or government, since that arrangement gave those in power an obvious means of shaping outcomes to their advantage, however small it might initially seem, which is not always obvious from the outside.
Over time, protections such as secure tenure, fixed salaries, and formal, transparent appointment processes were introduced in many places specifically to insulate judicial decision making from political pressure, even when a case involved the government itself as a party, which is one reason the rules keep evolving.
The gradual establishment of judicial independence is now widely regarded as one of the clearer markers separating a genuine rule of law system from one in which courts function mainly as an extension of executive power, a point worth keeping in mind going forward, as most functioning systems eventually demonstrate.