Judicial Reform
Encyclopedia
Judicial reform is the complete or partial political reform
Reform
Reform means to put or change into an improved form or condition; to amend or improve by change of color or removal of faults or abuses, beneficial change, more specifically, reversion to a pure original state, to repair, restore or to correct....

 of a country's judiciary
Judiciary
The judiciary is the system of courts that interprets and applies the law in the name of the state. The judiciary also provides a mechanism for the resolution of disputes...

. Judicial reform is often done as a part of wider reform of the countrys political system or a legal reform.
President of the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation Valery Zorkin
give in his article "Twelve Theseses on Legal Reform
in Russia
first published in Russian magazine
«Legislation and Economics», N. 2, 2004 explained correlation between legal and judicial reform:"Complete legal reform should normally include not only judicial reform,
but also reform of various aspects of the structural system and content
of legislation, legal education, legal awareness by the population, and
also the corporate consciousness of the whole legal community.Judicial reform usually aims to improve such things as law courts, procuracies,
advocacy (bar), inquest, executory processes, and record keeping...

Legal reform can be the «driver» for all other reforms, including reform
of the economy. A true market economy cannot be created without ensuring both full
guarantees of private property and transparent predictability for entrepreneurial
activity, on the one hand; and sufficiently reasonable legal control
over economic processes, on the other hand. Legal reform should be
an integral part of any on-going reform process. Legal reform is a tool for implementing necessary reforms, to balance
competing interests, create a dynamic and sustainable economy, and build
a sustainable civil society.
In modern Russia, aspects and directions of development of judicial reform
were formulated in the «Judicial Reform Concept», enacted by the
Russian Parliament on October 24, 1991. This document still remains
legally valid and applicable.

The «separation of powers» principle, also proclaimed in the Constitution
of the Russian Federation, requires observance of judicial independence.
And such independence requires proper funding of the courts and
their activities. It is well-known that Russian courts remain under-funded.
However, the cumulative economic costs suffered by both state and private
enterprises as the result of under-performance by various judicial institutions,
especially by the trial courts of general jurisdiction and the arbitration
courts, is at least twice the order of magnitude as the financial burden
carried by the state and society in financing such judicial institutions. The
elimination of under-funding of the courts would definitely improve the
efficiency of their work and be worthwhile.

Taking
into account the specifics of historical developments in Russia, one
may assert that without undertaking a large-scale legal reform it would be
extremely difficult to succeed concurrently with judicial reform. It is necessary now to start unfolding a full-scale legal reform, which
has to be completed by the year 2020. The official public presentation and
implementation of such legal reform should become the prime responsibility
of executive and legislative authorities. The program of legal reform
needs to be adopted in the form of a legislative act"..

Areas of the judicial reform often include; codification of law instead of common law
Common law
Common law is law developed by judges through decisions of courts and similar tribunals rather than through legislative statutes or executive branch action...

, moving froma an inquisitorial system
Inquisitorial system
An inquisitorial system is a legal system where the court or a part of the court is actively involved in investigating the facts of the case, as opposed to an adversarial system where the role of the court is primarily that of an impartial referee between the prosecution and the defense...

 to an adversarial system
Adversarial system
The adversarial system is a legal system where two advocates represent their parties' positions before an impartial person or group of people, usually a jury or judge, who attempt to determine the truth of the case...

, establishing stronger judicial independence with judicial council
Judicial Council
Judicial Council may refer to:*Canadian Judicial Council*Judicial Council of the United Methodist Church*Judicial council *Judicial Council of California...

s or changes to appointment procedure, establishing mandatory retirement age for judges or enhancing independence of prosecution.

See also

  • Constitutionalism
    Constitutionalism
    Constitutionalism has a variety of meanings. Most generally, it is "a complex of ideas, attitudes, and patterns of behavior elaborating the principle that the authority of government derives from and is limited by a body of fundamental law"....

  • Constitutional economics
    Constitutional economics
    Constitutional economics is a research program in economics and constitutionalism that has been described as extending beyond the definition of 'the economic analysis of constitutional law' in explaining the choice "of alternative sets of legal-institutional-constitutional rules that constrain the...

  • Judiciary
    Judiciary
    The judiciary is the system of courts that interprets and applies the law in the name of the state. The judiciary also provides a mechanism for the resolution of disputes...

  • Independence of the judiciary
  • Judiciary in Russia
  • Legal reform
  • Rule of law
    Rule of law
    The rule of law, sometimes called supremacy of law, is a legal maxim that says that governmental decisions should be made by applying known principles or laws with minimal discretion in their application...

  • Rule according to higher law
    Rule according to higher law
    The rule according to a higher law means that no written law may be enforced by the government unless it conforms with certain unwritten, universal principles of fairness, morality, and justice...

  • Separation of powers
    Separation of powers
    The separation of powers, often imprecisely used interchangeably with the trias politica principle, is a model for the governance of a state. The model was first developed in ancient Greece and came into widespread use by the Roman Republic as part of the unmodified Constitution of the Roman Republic...


External links

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