This article investigates the relationship between trust, security and the judiciary in Romania. Following the democratic transition and European Union (EU) membership, the Romanian legal system faced two crucial tasks: dealing with the past through means of transitional justice, such as lustration (vetting), and dealing with the future through anti-corruption measures that were to strengthen the rule of law and enable economic development. In dealing with both tasks, the Romanian judiciary was essential in making far-reaching decisions whose consequences went far beyond the legal system. In this article, the author examines some of the implications of the decisions in these two areas for the levels of trust within the judiciary and trust in the judiciary.

This article explores reasoned orders issued by the Court of Justice (the Court) to reply to preliminary references of the national courts in the procedure for a preliminary ruling of Article 267 TFEU. Reasoned orders allow the Court to reply in a swift manner to preliminary references that raise no doubts. This article looks at the use of reasoned orders as proxies of trust and, thus, contributes to the research on trust in a multilevel judicial system. To this end, it analyses all Article 99 orders issued by the Court of Justice during two full years (2020 and 2021). The article uses this qualitative analysis to reflect on the Court’s trust on its national counterparts, and of the latter in the Court, and provide suggestions on how to use these orders to enhance reciprocal trust.

The year 2015 marked a profound turn in Poland’s constitutional landscape. Under PiS rule, the country experienced the implementation of highly controversial reforms reorganising the Constitutional Tribunal, Supreme Court and, eventually, the judiciary as a whole. Despite domestic protests and international criticism, for several years the then-ruling party managed to maintain public support, most ostensibly reflected in the 2019 election’s results. The situation radically changed in late 2020, when PiS experienced a 10-point drop in ratings and, importantly, never managed to regain their popularity levels. From that juncture, one could observe one more phenomenon – a rapid decrease in support and trust in the then-already-reorganised Constitutional Tribunal. These shifts in societal attitudes most vividly coincided with one significant event: the Tribunal’s ruling on the termination of pregnancy on the ground of fatal foetal abnormality. Against this background, this article explores a relatively overlooked topic of trust dynamics within hybrid regimes. By using the Polish Tribunal as a testing ground, it reflects on the variability of public trust under PiS rule. By comparing two case studies – the capture of the Tribunal (2015-2016) and 2020 ruling on pregnancy termination grounds – we investigate how PiS tried to manipulate trust and distrust in judiciary in general and in the Tribunal in particular. In this vein, we apply McKnight and Chervany’s conceptualisation. Secondly, we discuss how the public trust in the Tribunal actually shifted and the factors that might have influenced that change, contrary to the former rulers’ wishes.