The challenge of evaluating the performance of the judiciary

The intention of the Serbian politicians is to perform reelection of all the judges (opposite to Serbian Constitution, as shown in the documents submitted to MEDEL members timely) and reduce their number for 1/3 of the current number.

There is a misunderstanding and certain amount of fear that only Serbia faces serious problems in judiciary, especially long lasting court proceedings. According to some politicians' opinion this problem is more present in Serbia than in any other member state of Council of Europe. Achievement of the EU standards is used as an excuse for demanding from judiciary to reduce the number of cases as soon as possible - regardless the quality of decisions. Thus, it is about to expect that relevant judicial and state bodies could adopt the criteria for evaluation of judges' performance based on quantity of their performance mostly.

Bearing in mind all the mentioned above, JAS' conference is aiming to point out the need for understanding of all aspects of judges' work, including both quantitative and qualitative aspect, in order to increase the citizens' trust in courts and Rule of Law. Besides, we would like to underline that quantity indicators should be used as parameters for determination of the number of judges needed in our future judicial systems rather than for evaluation of judges' performance.

JAS insists that arbitrarily determining of the number of judges needed in the new court system of Serbia, based on new Constitution, must be avoided. The only way to do so is through calculation of the needed time for solving of all cases of various complexities in compare to the time that judges devote to their work during the working days in the whole year.

Papers:
The evaluation of judges and prosecutors in the italian system (Luca de Matteis)
Preconditions for high quality and rational judicial system (Dragana Boljevic)

Analysis of judicial systems

Program

Quality of judicial acts (By Eric Alt)

Justice and modernisation

Colloquium in Lübeck, 26-27 october 2007

The role of the judiciary in Germany (Hans-Ernst Bôttcher)
(extract of the German Law journal)
Evaluation of judicial performance (Dragana Boljevic)

The Quality of Justice

Crisis of Efficiency of Civil Justice in Europe, colloquium, January 1999.

What is hidden behind the expression «crisis of justice»? Civil justice isn't responding to the expectations of citizens anymore. Why are the decisions of the courts, always increasingly solicited and accumulating delays, declining in quality? It is undoubtedly the sign of the waning of the Welfare State: the courts are called upon to resolve issues left without answer.

Faced with an influx of litigations, the role of the judge must be redefined: it is one of the subjects of this colloquium. At the same time, we have to assert our concern for guaranteeing the impartiality and independence of the judge: for MEDEL, the first goal of efficiency must aim at respecting those principles, which are the pillars of the European model of justice.