Do judges get penalised when their decisions are quashed by a higher court?

Question

In New Zealand, court decisions are fairly often taken to a higher court and got quashed / overturned. When this happens, the higher court judge would typically rule that the previous judge "erred" in this and that, and produce a significantly different result/ruling.

So, when a judge is found to have "erred" in their decision, does this somehow affect them? Do they get somehow penalised, fined, warned or otherwise receive something that would motivate them to not "err" again?

If they do not, (how) does the law protect people from biased/corrupt judges who would "err" intentionally — taking chances that their devious decisions will not be appealed against?

Answer 1

Yes it affects them.

Judges are pursuing their vocation as a career and there are career paths within the judicial system just as there are in every other career. Screw up too many times and your career ends at your present level.

Judges are also professionals and most take professional pride in doing their jobs well. Having a decision overturned is professionally embarrassing.

As a matter of public policy, there is no sanction that is directly applied to the judge otherwise judges would be too cautious to make decisions. Anyone who makes professional decisions will get them wrong from time to time - they generally are not punished.

That said there are judicial errors that stem from making the wrong judgement (so to say) call and judicial errors that stem from royally screwing up. The former are far less damaging than the latter. For an example of the former, a judge is applying a relatively new statute for which there have been no other decisions and interprets the legislation in a reasonable way but one the appeal court disagrees with. For an example of the latter, deciding the matter on a basis which neither party put before the court and which the judge did not draw to the parties attention during the trial - as a common law country, the New Zealand legal system is adversarial: the court exists to decide the dispute between the parties on the basis the parties argue, not to go on a "frolic of its own".

In addition, appeal courts can only overrule a decision if the judge has made an error of law, not if they have made an error of fact. A judge is allowed to be wrong about the facts but not about the law. In practice, the distinction is not trivial.

In a jury trial, the jury decides the facts, the judge decides the law - appeals can only be on the basis of what the judge did, not on the basis of what the jury did (barring egregious misconduct by the jury). In a judge only trial the judge decides both but an appeal can only be on matters of law.

Answer 2

In the U.S., the answer to this question would be no, it doesn't affect the judge at all, other than as a matter of personal pride. Judges cannot be removed from office or penalized in any way professionally for having their judgment reversed on appeal.

Indeed, about 99% of the time, if a decision of a judge is overturned on appeal, on remand, the case is returned to the same judge to render a decision in light of the appellate court opinion (something that is forbidden as a matter of course in appeals in a civil law system).

The New Zealand courts are probably different, because while they are in a common law tradition, New Zealand tends to follow British practices more closely where judges are civil servants and promoted within a civil service type system (without direct accountability to a government department head) that might consider excessive reversals, rather than being promoted in a political or quasi-political process as they are in the United States.

If they do not, (how) does the law protect people from biased/corrupt judges who would "err" intentionally — taking chances that their devious decisions will not be appealed against?

In the United States, this is a serious problem and the sole recourse is to appeal the decision.