Resource Guide on Strengthening

Judicial Integrity and Capacity

Vienna International Centre, PO Box 500, 1400 Vienna, Austria Tel.: (+43-1) 26060-0, Fax: (+43-1) 26060-5866, www.unodc.org

*1185709*

United Nations publicationPrinted in Austria

V.11-85709December 2011

Resource Guide on Strengthening Judicial Integrity and Capacity

United nations new York, 2011

UNITED NATIONS OFFICE ON DRUGS AND CRIME Vienna

United Nations, December 2011. All rights reserved.

The designations employed and the presentation of material in this publication do not imply the expression of any opinion whatsoever on the part of the Secretariat of the United Nations concerning the legal status of any country, territory, city or area, or of its authorities, or concerning the delimitation of its frontiers or boundaries.

This publication has not been formally edited.

Publishing production: English, Publishing and Library Section, United Nations Office at Vienna.

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Acknowledgements

In the preparation of this Guide, reference was made to, and inspiration drawn from, numerous sources. These include international instruments, national codes of judicial conduct and commentaries thereon, judgements and decisions of international, regional and national courts, opinions of judicial ethics advisory committees, and learned treatises. Where citations have been used, they have been acknowledged in the footnotes. Where opinions and comments have been borrowed from national or regional contexts and made general enough to be used by all judicial systems, the original source is not mentioned in the text.

UNODC wishes to thank the participants in the Intergovernmental Expert Group Meet-ing held in Vienna on 1-2 March 2007, inter alia, to provide guidance on the desired content of the guide. The expert group was attended by representatives of Algeria, Azerbaijan, the Dominican Republic, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Indonesia, Iran (Islamic Republic of), Latvia, the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, Morocco, Namibia, the Netherlands, Nigeria, Pakistan, Panama, the Republic of Korea, Republic of Moldova, Romania, the Russian Federation, Saudi Arabia, Serbia, Spain, Sri Lanka, the Syrian Arab Republic, Turkey and the United States of America. The meeting was also attended by members of the Judicial Group on Strengthening Judicial Integrity, as well as representa-tives of the American Bar Association, the Consultative Council of European Judges, the German Agency for Technical Cooperation, the National Judicial Institute of Nigeria, the Research Institute on Judicial Systems of the Italian National Research Council, the International Institute of Higher Studies in Criminal Sciences and the Programme on Governance in the Arab Region of the United Nations Development Programme.

UNODC is most grateful for the work carried out by the American Bar Associations Rule of Law Initiative (ABA ROLI), in particular by Ms. Olga Ruda, ABA ROLI Research Coordinator, in preparing chapters 2, 4 and 5, as well as Brenner Allen and Paulina Rudnicka, ABA ROLI Legal Analysts. UNODC wishes also to extend its thanks to the Research Institute on Judicial Systems (IRSIG-CNR) in particular Prof. Giuseppe Di Federico and Mr. Francesco Contini, for drafting chapters 1, 3, 6 and 7 and for hosting the Expert Group Meeting for the finalization of the Guide held on 8 to 10 November 2009 in Bologna, Italy and for contributing to the drafting process.

UNODC gratefully acknowledges the work of the Expert Group who participated in the meeting to review the draft Guide on Strengthening Judicial Integrity and Capacity, held on 8 to 10 November 2009 at the Research Institute on Judicial Systems (IRSIG-CNR) in Bologna, Italy. The meeting was attended by Ms. Helen Burrows, Director, International Programmes, Federal Court of Australia; Dr. Jens Johannes Deppe, Expert of the Project Planning & Strategy Department of the GTZ, sub-division State and Democracy in Germany; Prof. Giuseppe Di Federico, Law Professor Emeritus, University of Bologna in Italy; Mr. Marco Fabri, Senior Researcher at the Research Institute on Judicial Systems, National Research Council (IRSIG-CNR), Bologna, Italy; Mr. Francesco Contini, Researcher, the Research Institute on Judicial Systems, National Research Council (IRSIG-CNR), Bologna, Italy; Justice Riaga Samuel Omolo, Judge at the Court of Appeal, Kenya; Justice Dory Reiling, Vice-president, Amsterdam District Court, The Netherlands; Prof. Antoine Hol, Professor of Jurisprudence, Director of the Montaigne Centre for

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Adjudication and Conflict Resolution, Dept. Justice at the Court of Appeal of Amsterdam and Dept. Judge at the Court of Haarlem in the Netherlands; Mr. Joseph Chuma Otteh, Director, Access to Justice, Nigeria; Mr. Conceio Gomes Conceio, Researcher and Executive Coordinator at the Permanent Observatory on Portuguese Justice and Senior Researcher at the Centre for Social Studies of the University of Coimbra in Portugal; Mr. Jorge Carrera Domnech, International Relations Advisor at the General Council for the Judiciary of Spain and Secretary to the Ibero-American Group of the International Assocation of Judges; Mr. Colin Nichols, Honorary Life President and a former President of the Commonwealth Lawyers Association, United Kingdom; Dr. Nihal Jayawickrama, Independent Legal Consultant and Co-ordinator, Judicial Integrity Group, United Kingdom; Dr. Brian Ostrom, Principal Research Consultant with the National Centre for State Courts in Williamsburg, Virginia, United States; Mr. Markus Zimmer, International Judicial Systems Advisor, United States; Ms. Olga Ruda, Research CoordinatorResearch and Assessments Office, Rule of Law Initiative, American Bar Association, Washington, United States; Ms. Nina Berg, Justice Adviser, Democratic Governance Group, Bureau of Development Policy, UNDP New York, United States; Mr. Jason Reichelt, Judicial Affairs Officer, Office of Rule of Law and Security Insti tutions, United Nations Depart-ment of Peacekeeping Operations, United States; Mr. Oliver Stolpe and Ms Jouhaida Hanano, Justice and Integrity Unit, UNODC, Vienna, Austria.

Special thanks is due to the following UNODC staff who contributed to the drafting and review of the guide, Oliver Stolpe, Country Representative ad interim for the Office in Nigeria and Jason Reichelt, Dorothee Gottwald and Jouhaida Hanano, from the Corruption and Economic Crime Branch of the Division for Treaty Affairs.

UNODC wishes also to acknowledge all the experts, in particular the members of the International Network to Promote the Rule of Law (INPROL), who have shared their views and observations on the guide and helped to further improve upon it.

UNODC is grateful to the German Agency for Technical Cooperation (Deutsche Gesell-schaft fr Technische Zusammenarbeit) and to the Governments of Norway and Sweden, without whose support the preparation of this guide would not have been possible.

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Contents

Page

INTRODUCTION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

I. RECRUITMENT, PROFESSIONAL EVALUATION AND TRAINING OF JUDGES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

2. Basic legal education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

3. Models of judicial recruitment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

4. Initial education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

5. Professional evaluation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12

6. Continuing education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

7. Recruitment, dismissal and remuneration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17

8. Conclusions and recommendations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18

II. COURT PERSONNEL: FUNCTION AND MANAGEMENT . . . . . . . . . . 21

1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21

2. Selection and appointment process . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22

3. Professional training . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24

4. Remuneration, benefits and incentive awards programmes . . . . . . . . . . . 26

5. Codes of conduct and ethics training . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30

6. Performance indicators and evaluation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32

7. Disciplinary action . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34

8. Professional associations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36

9. Conclusions and recommendations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37

III. CASE AND COURT MANAGEMENT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39

1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39

2. Case assignment procedures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40

3. Case management systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43

4. Differentiated case management (DCM) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46

5. Pretrial and trial