Out of the chaos of ill conceived reform legislation, piecemeal attempts at judicial improvement, and general failure to achieve concrete results in remedying the defects in our legal procedure, there has evolved a nation wide movement for the formation of Judicial Councils to aid in solving our procedural problems. Knowledge of this movement is important to Washington lawyers because the Washington State Bar Association at its convention in August recommended the creation of a Judicial Council for Washington, and a special committee of the bar will be appointed to secure the passage of a Judicial Council act at the next session of the Legislature.
peer-reviewed ; The Judicial Council Act was finally published in July 2019, almost 20 years after it was first proposed. The origins of the proposal go back further still. In 1996, the Constitution Review Group had recommended amending Article 35 of the Constitution in order to provide for a Judicial Council which would regulate judicial conduct.1 The Fourth Progress Report of the All-Party Oireachtas Committee on the Constitution, published in 1999, also recommended the establishment of a council to regulate the conduct of judges, which would comprise judges, retired judges and also a lay element.2 Similar recommendations were made in further reports such as the Sixth Report of the Working Group on a Courts Commission (the Denham Report)3 and the Report of the Committee on Judicial Conduct and Ethics (the Keane Report).4 These two latter reports form the original basis of the Act. The Keane Report was a detailed response to the Denham Report and as a result, the Government brought forward a proposal which sought to amend the Constitution in order to establish a judicial council.5 That particular Bill was not well-drafted and consequently, the proposal was dropped.6 In 2007, the Irish Council for Civil Liberties produced a further report making similar recommendations7 and subsequently, draft legislation was prepared and a scheme of a bill was published to give effect to the Keane Report in August 2010. From 2011 to 2015 the Bill featured in successive iterations of the Government's Legislative Programme and while it appeared to drop off the radar in 2016,8 the Bill was finally initiated in 2017. Today's Act is the final product of that journey. ; ACCEPTED ; peer-reviewed
On April 6,1923, the Ohio legislature passed an act creating a Judicial Council charged with making a continuous study of the organization, rules, and methods of practice of the courts of that state, the work accomplished, and the results produced by the judicial system and its various parts. Hampered by a lack of funds during its first years of life, this body seemed destined to languish and waste away. In 1929, however, all was changed, for in that year the Council succeeded in arranging with the Institute of Law of the Johns Hopkins University for a three-year study of judicial administration in Ohio. This survey, which represented the first of a series of state-wide studies of "law-in-action" contemplated by the Institute of Law, proposed not only to organize technical research in connection with the actual operation of the courts, but to go beyond this and look into causes and effects of law administration in the social process. More specifically, it proposed, among other things: (1) to study the trends of litigation and ascertain its human causes and effects; (2) to study the machinery and functioning of the various agencies and offices which directly or indirectly have to do with the administration of law; (3) to locate precisely and definitely the reasons for delays, expenses, and uncertainty in litigation; (4) to institute a permanent system of judicial records and statistics which would automatically provide information now secured only after great labor; (5) to detect the points at which changes in substantive law would contribute markedly to social justice; and (6) to consider the results of the aforesaid analyses and make recommendations based thereon.
A few years ago, judicial councils composed primarily of judges were viewed as a panacea for virtually all problems of court administration in Europe. The burgeoning literature on judicial councils has shown that this is not necessarily thecase. This article builds on this literature, but it argues that judicial self governance is much broader phenomenon than judicial councils and may also take different forms. Therefore, it is high time to look beyond judicial councils and to view judicial self–governance as a much more complex network of actors and bodies with different levels of participation of judges. To that end this article conceptualizes judicial self governance and identifies crucial actors within the judiciary who may engage in judicial governance (such as judicial councils, judicial appointment commissions, promotion committees, court presidents and disciplinary panels). Subsequently,it shows that both the forms, rationales, and effects of judicial self governance have varied across Europe. Finally, this article argues that it is necessary to take into account the liquid nature of judicial self governance and its responsiveness to political, social, and cultural changes. Moreover, the rise of judicial self governance is not necessarily a panacea, as it may lead to political contestation and the creation of new channels of politicization of the judiciary.
AbstractCurrently, at least three approaches to judicial governance coexist in the European continent: the judicial council model, the courts service model, and the Ministry of Justice model. Although doctrinal and case-specific literatures abound on this topic, examples of cross-country studies explaining choices on these models of judicial governance are rather scarce. More particularly, we lack so far knowledge on how different factors interact in leading to the implementation of the judicial council model. This is striking, given the importance of judicial councils for the operation of the rule of law. Furthermore, explanations on the choices of models of judicial governance are essential to understanding the intricate issue of the political rationalities underlying macrolevel design of judicial institutions. Using qualitative comparative analysis and focusing on European liberal democracies, this article contributes to the literature in the field. It is shown that judicial councils are created when postauthoritarian countries implement new constitutions either in romanistic law countries or in countries subject to Europeanizing pressures.
