The privilege and the pressure: judges' and magistrates' reflections on the sources and impacts of stress in judicial work.

There is growing evidence that judges and magistrates experience both high stress and high satisfaction in their work; however, the subjective experience of judicial stress and the cultural and professional factors shaping that experience remain largely unexamined. This qualitative study builds upon earlier quantitative research with the Australian judiciary, by exploring judges' and magistrates' perceptions of the sources and impacts of judicial stress and their ideas for court responses. Thematic analysis of 59 in-depth interviews with judicial officers from five Australian courts revealed eight themes pertaining to the better understanding and management of occupational stress within the judiciary. Implications for courts and individual judicial officers are discussed.

Vicarious trauma in the judicial workplace: state liability for judicial psychiatric injury in Australia.

There is developing, yet strong, evidence that judicial officers are seriously affected by exposure to traumatic material. The risk and prevalence of psychiatric injury to judges is now increasingly recognised. In the light of growing recognition by the High Court of Australia of the likelihood of psychiatric harm arising in people whose work exposes them to traumatic material in Kozarov v Victoria ('Kozarov'), we investigate through legal analysis the possibility that judicial officers may be entitled to compensation for such harm. This might seem straightforward after the High Court decided in Kozarov that the State was liable in negligence for trauma-related psychiatric injury to an employee lawyer caused in the court-related work environment. We argue in this article that, while there are strong arguments which support liability in negligence for judicial officers as non-employees, nevertheless such claims will be complex and will face a range of hurdles and barriers including those arising from judicial independence and judicial immunity.

Where stress presides: predictors and correlates of stress among Australian judges and magistrates.

Recent research on the nature, prevalence and severity of judicial stress in Australia has revealed a considerable burden of stress placed upon the judicial system. This article builds upon this research by exploring the demographic and workplace factors associated with elevated stress among Australian judicial officers. A survey of 152 judicial officers from 5 Australian courts found that judicial stress - operationalised as non-specific psychological distress, depressive and anxious symptoms, burnout and secondary traumatic stress - was predicted by satisfaction of the basic psychological needs of autonomy, competence and relatedness. The only demographic variable found to be reliably associated with judicial stress was jurisdiction: compared with judicial officers in the higher jurisdictions (i.e. judges), those in the summary jurisdictions (i.e. magistrates) reported significantly higher levels of stress and significantly lower levels of basic psychological needs satisfaction. Implications and areas for future research are discussed. Alcohol use and dependence was not associated with levels of stress or needs satisfaction.