Category: international

UK judges to receive pay raise

The UK judiciary will receive a 2% across-the-board salary hike, the highest raise for the judges in a decade, according to the Daily Mail. Judges in certain courts may receive a larger raise if the Ministry of Justice follows the latest recommendations of the Senior Salaries Review Body (SSRB).

The SSRB says recruitment problems were principally occuring because conditions of service for a judge had become ‘much less attractive’ to potential applicants. Changes to tax and pensions meant the total net remuneration for a new High Court judge is worth £80,000 less than it was 10 years ago, £49,000 less for a circuit judge, and £29,000 less for a district judge.

The report states that those who join the judiciary are motivated by a challenging job and providing a valuable public service: ‘The problem is that potential judges from the senior ranks of the legal profession are not applying in sufficient numbers. This situation requires urgent and effective intervention. It is generally accepted that the public sector cannot match the rewards for a top QC or solicitor. However, the judicial role needs to be made more attractive in order to recruit high quality legal professionals as judges.’

The SSRB recommends that High Court judges should be paid £240,000 (a 32% increase), £165,000 for circuit judges (a 22% increase) and £117,000 for district judges (an 8% increase).

Gauke said the government will ‘carefully consider’ the SSRB’s recommendations ‘and respond in due course’. Until then, the recruitment and retention allowance for High Court judges will remain.

 

Australian judge warns that overworked judges may contemplate suicide

In a remarkably stark assessment, New South Wales District Judge Robyn Tupman warned that docket pressure on Australia’s courts might drive some of her judicial colleagues to suicide.

Citing two recent, high-profile cases of Australian judges taking their own lives, Judge Tupman argued that a lack of resources in the courts put pressure on judges–especially newer judges–to keep up with rapidly expanding dockets. This is particularly concerning, Judge Tupman said, when docket pressure forces judges to make highly sensitive decisions under extreme time pressure. By way of example, she noted that she was scheduled to sentence seven different offenders on the day of her remarks, some of which were bound to draw significant public attention. The clear implication of her remarks was that pressure to get the sentence right was exacerbated by not having enough to time to properly consider it.

Judge Tupman described the her current caseload as “ridiculous, absurd and offensive to the people of NSW.”

Her comments follow other recent statements of concern about judicial mental health in Australia. Local bar leaders and NSW Attorney General Mark Speakman have committed to review the judge’s concerns.

 

India’s Supreme Court to introduce live streaming

The Indian Express reports:

Ushering in more transparency in the judiciary’s work, the Supreme Court on Wednesday gave its nod to live-streaming of court proceedings, saying this will bring more accountability and enhance the rule of law.

A bench of Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra and Justices A M Khanwilkar and D Y Chandrachud, in two concurring judgements — one by CJI Misra and Justice Khanwilkar and other by Justice Chandrachud — said: “We hold that the cause brought before this court by the protagonists in larger public interest deserves acceptance so as to uphold the constitutional rights of the public, and the litigants in particular.”

Delving into the benefits of allowing this, Justice Chandrachud said, “Above all, sunlight is the best disinfectant.”

India gets it. When will we be able to say that of our Supreme Court?

 

EU sues Poland over judicial reforms

In its latest move against the Poland’s increasingly restrictive judiciary laws, the European Union has asked its top court, the European Court of Justice, to suspend a recent Polish law that would force the retirement of more than one-third of its top judges.

The body said in a statement that “the Polish law on the Supreme Court is incompatible with EU law as it undermines the principle of judicial independence.”

Poland’s law on the retirement of judges at the Supreme Court put 27 of 72 judges at risk of being forced to retire, the Commission said, with no clear criteria on who can stay.

The Commission gave Warsaw a first warning in July, when the law took effect, and followed it up with another step in August before taking Monday’s decision.

Previous coverage here, here, here, here, and here.

Kenyan courts vow to resolve 5000 long-delayed cases by the end of September

Facing a backlog of more than 60,000 cases that have been pending between five and ten years, Kenya’s judiciary has pledged to resolve more than 5,000 of them by September 28. The selected docket includes civil, criminal, and commercial cases.

It is not clear to me from the story why these 5,000 cases were chosen, or how practical it is to resolve them all so quickly and still do justice to the parties. Perhaps these cases are ripe for decision or administrative closure, and it is primarily a clerical task to clear them. But if they require resolution on the merits, this sort of frantic clearing of the docket is likely to backfire on the court system–especially since the story suggests that the judges won’t even be back from their six-week vacation until mid-September.

I welcome any thoughts in the comments from those more knowledgeable about the current conditions within the Kenyan court system.

More internal strife within India’s court system — UPDATED WITH DOCUMENTATION

Two stories coming out of India caught my eye this past week. The first was an op-ed discussing the ongoing debate about the use of MBA-qualified court managers to gain better control over the administration of the court system. Given the shocking backlog and delay in many of India’s courts, appointing special managers to help streamline the case management process makes good sense. But as is the case with most organizations, the introduction of “outsiders” to clean up an internal mess poses a threat to those already working within the system. Fixing this will require a cultural shift within the Indian court system, probably from the top down. But it will not be easy.

In an unrelated story, but one reflecting some of the same difficulties, an attorney was held in contempt of court and jailed for one month for making disparaging remarks about the court on Facebook. The court referred to the “judge bashing” as a form of browbeating, terrorizing, or intimidating judges.

I cannot find the exact social media post that instigated the contempt charge, so I cannot tell whether the lawyer’s actions were an anomaly or something more pervasive. But the whole story suggests an unhealthy relationship between court and counsel. Attacking the courts on Facebook is childish and unprofessional. But jailing a lawyer for a social media post is (at least seemingly) thin-skinned and cowardly. Unless the post called for violence against judges or the court system, a contempt proceeding would seem to do more harm to the courts than a Facebook post ever would.

UPDATE: The entire contempt order can be found here. It does appear that the lawyer’s Facebook comments were pretty obnoxious (although I am not culturally suave enough to decode them entirely). But the court’s 45-page defense of judicial independence and the “majesty of the law” also seems very over the top. Quoting Othello is a particularly odd, cloying touch. A shorter, sterner statement could have addressed the court’s concerns without making the judges appear so professionally and emotionally fragile.

 

UK criminal bar offers tentative support for courtroom cameras

The Criminal Bar Association in the United Kingdom has offered tentative support for placing cameras in the courtroom, in part as a means to tamp down “aggressive” behavior by barristers. The organization added that any introduction of cameras must be done carefully so as to shield (as necessary)the identity of victims.

The sentiments were echoed by the Transparency Project, a group which campaigns to improve the clarity of family courts. The group also noted its skepticism that courtroom cameras would control aggressive lawyering.

Protecting the identities of witnesses, victims, and jurors has long been a sticking point for the introduction of courtroom cameras. But these issues have exist–and would continue to exist–in any open court setting. As the recent ugliness surrounding the Manafort trial has shown, judges are up to the task of protecting the identities of jurors and witnesses as needed on a case-by-case basis.

EU turns up the heat on Poland after PiS works to force judicial retirements

In the wake of a new Polish law lowering the mandatory retirement age of judges from 70 to 65, the European Union has advanced to the next stage of its infringement procedure against the PiS (Law and Justice Party) led government.

The new Polish law on the Supreme Court lowers the retirement age of Supreme Court judges from 70 to 65, which puts 27 out of 72 sitting Supreme Court judges at risk of being forced to retire. This measure also applies to the First President of the Supreme Court, whose 6-year mandate, set out in the Polish Constitution, would be prematurely terminated.

According to the law, current judges affected by the lowered retirement age are given the possibility to request a prolongation of their mandate by the President of the Republic, which can be granted for a period of three years, and renewed once. There are no criteria established for the President’s decision and no judicial review is available if the request is rejected.

***

The Commission’s position is that the Polish law on the Supreme Court is incompatible with EU law as it undermines the principle of judicial independence, including the irremovability of judges, and thereby Poland fails to fulfil its obligations under Article 19(1) of the Treaty on European Union read in connection with Article 47 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union.

The Polish government has been given one month to comply with its obligations. I wish I could be optimistic that it will.

On the mental health strains associated with judging

Years ago, in practice, I was involved in a series of cases involving allegations that a certain drug had caused infertility in women. I had to depose a number of plaintiffs who had been unable to bear children, and ask them intensely personal questions about their physical and sexual health in order to better ascertain the strength of their claims. I did my very best to handle the situation like a professional, but often the deponents would (understandably) become highly emotional during questioning. For me, an unmarried twenty-something just a few years out of law school, it was an awkward experience. Their reactions would stick with me when I went home at night.

From time to time I would ask my friends who worked as attorneys in the criminal justice system–who spent their days knee-deep in murders, sexual assaults, and various other horrible acts–how they could block those images away when they went home at night. It wasn’t easy at all, they admitted, but somehow they managed. One had to find a way to compartmentalize work and home, for one’s own mental health. And often those images and stories did haunt them at home, as much as in the workplace.

A lengthy story out of Australia keenly illustrates that judges are equally susceptible to these challenges. Six judges in Victoria talked to the Sydney Morning Herald about judicial mental health, including the judges’ environment, coping mechanisms, and (occasionally tragic) responses. As one judge put it:

“It’s been hidden, unspoken, unacknowledged and surrounded by taboo and shame for a long time,” she says. “There’s this sort of almost irreconcilable conflict between being an impartial decision-maker and being a human being who responds in a human way to what we’re doing.

“Because we’ve got to be tough [and] impartial, there’s been a concern about ‘Are you not intellectually rational enough to do the job, or are you too weak as a person if you’re responding on a personal level to other people’s trauma?’ So [there’s] the shame of saying, ‘I’m struggling, I’m finding this hard … I’m finding it hard to reconcile the human part of me with my impassive, impartial demeanour.'”

An important read for anyone involved in the administration of justice.