Worldbuilding Weekend Prompt #56 - Judges

Welcome to the next in an ongoing series of writing prompts in the Worldbuilding community !

I'm aiming to post one of these each Sunday. They aren't a replacement for the excellent daily prompts from @worldbuilding they're just an extra opportunity if you have a writing itch you want to scratch. 😀

Image generated by AI in Wombo.art

The prompt this week is - Judges

In our world, judges are usually a formal appointment by the state, appointed by their own internal regulatory or professional associations, selected by election, or upstanding members of the community (here in the UK, Justices of the Peace). They are usually knowledgeable and trained in the law, with a previous legal career as a prosecutor or defender. Sometimes they are intended to be politically neutral, at other times they are supposed to apply the will of the state.

Tell me about judges in your setting. How are they selected, how are they supposed to behave, and what peculiar privileges do they have ? Are they dignitaries to be respected, or enforcers of unjust laws to be feared ? Are they independent of political influence ? Are they easy to bribe ?

Just to add a bit of spice to things, the two entries I most like (and are linked in comments to this post, so I can find them !) that are posted by midnight (GMT) next Saturday will each get a prize of one Hive SBI.

This link will take you to the FAQ where you can read more about Hive SBI - it's a project I thoroughly support because it gives both the donor and winner a steady trickle of passive income paid out in the form of upvotes on posts.

Guidelines

I stole these guidelines straight from @worldbuilding prompts (I hope that's okay !), I couldn't have written them any better myself....

• Prompt replies may be anything! Art, game assets, stories, worldbuilding details, fake wiki entries, maps... whatever you want to create!
• Please ensure you reply to this post with a link to your reply
• Posting in or cross-posting to the Worldbuilding community is highly encouraged
• Use the hashtag #worldbuilding
• Prompt replies can be any length.

Some other neat communities for writing that you might want to check out are:

• Freewriters
• Scholar and Scribe
• Tabletop / DND
• The Ink Well

It can be a lot of fun to mix and match our prompts with some of these other community prompts.