AHC – Rule by Unelected Courts / Judiciary

Assuming there is not already an OTL historical precedence and pre-existing term (with suitable Greek/Latin-derived prefix to go with the suffix -ocracy) to define such a phenomena, the challenge is to establish a form of Rule where unelected courts / judiciary ARE the government instead of merely being a branch of a kingdom / nation.
 
Assuming there is not already an OTL historical precedence and pre-existing term (with suitable Greek/Latin-derived prefix to go with the suffix -ocracy) to define such a phenomena, the challenge is to establish a form of Rule where unelected courts / judiciary ARE the government instead of merely being a branch of a kingdom / nation.
Sounds like something from the bible.
 
I see, was under the impression that there were much earlier pre-1900 historical examples though it seems some dispute whether they can be defined as Kritarchy or using the Greek/Latin-derived terms I was after Kritocracy / Kritacracy or even Iudiciocracy (depending which term is accurate).

Though historians are mostly undecided about it, the Bible describes something like this in Israel post-conquest, pre-monarchy. It's not necessarily clear that the translation "judge" is correct, though; modern Hebrew translates two words as "judge", and the descriptions in the Bible aren't particularly judicial in character.

Iceland in the pre-monarchy age was run as a confederation of fairly independent holdings, each of which sent their leader to the Althingi, a large gathering typically translated as "parliament" in the modern day. The Althingi, though, was more concerned with adjudicating disputes than passing new laws (though it did do some of the latter - but mostly to clarify unclear laws; there's some resemblance to how Supreme Courts work in setting binding verdicts). While people sometimes like to talk about how democratic the system was, the gothi were mostly hereditary and rich, though the term "aristocracy" might be a little grand.
 
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