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Court Administration and Management in Armenia
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Transparency of courts information; EU Phare technical assistance project, "Prevention of Corruption in the Court System"
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Within the framework of a European Union Phare technical assistance project, EU and Latvian experts have prepared a report on the transparency of information in the court system in Latvia. The objective of the project is to reduce the potential corruption risk factors by promoting court transparency and public access to information.
The report consists of three related parts. The first part contains analysis of the situation in Latvia on the basis of legislation pertaining to the openness of court proceedings and on the basis of practice as reflected in a survey of judges. In order to formulate the necessary revisions, in the second part of the report the project’s international experts offer a model of a transparent judicial system based on the positive experiences of Sweden and France, as well as international commitments with regard to accessibility of information. In the third part, the experts provide recommendations for improving public access to court information.
It is necessary to develop a unified system in Latvia to provide the public with information about court proceedings, as well as other court-related issues. Within the framework of the EU Phare project, it is envisaged to develop a court information portal by the end of the year, as well as to organize training programmes for court employees with the involvement of judges and mass media representatives
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Justice for All: Strategies for Effective Court Reform; Douglas Dunn
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The paper is an attempt to present suggestions to reforming the court management system with the purpose of making judiciary procedures more “user-friendly”. The central idea of the author is that although law should be "tough" on criminals, there should also be an effective criminal justice system that protects the rights on innocent people while being hard on those who violate the law.
Author presents several suggestions to reforming the court administration, such as cutting costs associated with lawsuits, ensuring high quality of legal representation; decreasing the contingency fees, which have become a real guarantee of popular access to the court system for those who could not otherwise afford legal representation; reformation of the payment of punitive damages; making the courts accessible to individuals and open and transparent in their operations; improving the ways how persons accused of crimes but not yet found guilty are treated; making courts fulfill their duties within scheduled court dates; and providing adequate compensation and/or incentives for people to participate in jury services.
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Frank Emmert (2003). Administrative and Court Reform in Central and Eastern Europe; European Law Journal; Volume 9
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The pre-accession programs of the European Union and the candidate countries have focused heavily on law reform. Only relatively recently, it was recognized that successful administrative and court reform would be just as necessary in order to achieve the desired goals, namely that the candidates would eventually be able to take on their obligations as new members of the Union.
Unfortunately, it has now become evident that it is easier to write new laws than to get them properly applied in every day practice. This article describes a number of cases to illustrate the problem. It shows that administrators and judges in Central and Eastern Europe have significant difficulties with Western working methods, specifically the application of international norms in the national legal order, due process and procedural safeguards, treatment of precedents, resolution of ambiguities and lacunae in the law, etc., which may in turn result in unjust and sometimes absurd application of laws. These difficulties cannot be resolved merely by organizing ever more training courses and other theoretical programs.
The author claims that the majority of efforts promoting administrative and court reform applied so far have rendered only meager results. Therefore, additional and more creative measures have to be designed and implemented and have to be continued for years beyond accession of most of these countries to the EU in 2004. Otherwise, rule of law deserving its name will not materialize in the new Member States. The author concludes by offering some ideas based on many years of experience in the region.
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