Description
In post-communist countries, quality of judicial system depends rather on the people who are judges than on its institutional design defined by laws. It is crucial who the judges are and how they act and behave. In 2014 and 2015 there will be important personal changes in the key positions of Slovak judiciary. These include the election of the President of the Supreme Court, which automatically becomes the Chairman of the Judicial Council and selection of three constitutional judges. The objectives of the project Personality of Judge - Key to Good Judiciary is to increasing quality demands for the selection of judges and important court officials and to increase public pressure to process of selection as well as to focus its attention to Slovak judiciary. We will monitor the selection processes on judges and judiciary officials; organize broad campaign for Good selection of the President of Supreme Court focused on public. The campaign will have its own web page, viral video, public opinion poll, public discussion; it will be supported by publicly well-known opinion makers. The aim of the campaign is to make public pressure to the quality of selection process. Consequently we will analyze actual legislative regulation of selection process, we will propose recommendations of its change and advocate for their adoption. During the project we will monitor also activities of Judicial Council with the aim to identify the weakest places, propose recommendations of its change and advocate for their adoption. The activities of the project will be focused on broad public (campaign, awareness rising) as well as professionals and expert public (judges, academics) and decision makers (government and MPs) by addressing the recommendations of legislative changes. We do not plan to realize the project within the partnership, but we will closely cooperate on realization of the campaign with marketing agency, analytical subjects as well as insiders for the justice.
Summary of project results
Project contributed to important personal changes in the leading positions of the judiciary. It also helped to reveal inconsistencies in the tender procedures of judges and resulted into proposals of concrete solutions for more transparent selection of judges and higher standard of requirements for the exercise of their function. There were also positive changes in the composition of the Judicial Council. In respect to the selection of the constitutional judges, candidates to latter positions were not appointed in reason of their weak professional competences. Important moment was also the selection of Slovak candidates for the European Court of Human Rights. All these personal changes will last various years, in function of particular tenures. We elaborated legislative recommendations concerning the modification in the tender procedure of judges and in the functioning of the Judicial Council. We enforced that oral part of tender procedure of judges would be recorded. Before Parliamentary elections the majority of relevant political parties adopted our legislative recommendations and promised to implement them after elections. After 14 years, also thanks to our activities, there was adopted a new high-quality ethnical codex for judges which clearly defines the limits of their behaviour in the exercise of their functions. VIA IURIS introduced the topic of the professional ethics of judges 6 years ago. Thanks to the present project we could continue in these efforts and participate even in the elaboration of the ethical codex. We involved the primary target group through discussions, consultations, presentation of our expert outputs and through the calls we addressed to decision-makers. The public represented a target group in the framework of our campaign “For a good election”, public surveys and communications with media. We also initiated cooperation with the Judicial Council and the Supreme Court. Both institutions asked us to cooperate in the examination of the reasons of a high level of the distrust of the public in judiciary. The project strengthened our cooperation with the expert public, mainly with the judges. We evaluate our cooperation with the donor as very positive, without problems and correct.
Summary of bilateral results