Civil court staff in Kenya: working conditions and legal training for an effective procedure

Courts are very important because their pronouncements become part of the law in light of the provisions of section 3 of the Judicature Act, 1967. Therefore, the process of making judicial determinations on issues before courts must be treated with the necessary efficiency. Delivery of justice involves both judicial and administrative work. That is to say, for expediency in the administration of justice to be met, there is a need for other administrative functions which cannot be done by the judges. Therefore, the role of judicial staff in case management is critical in the functioning of the judiciary. Though the Judiciary has come up with different initiatives to build capacity for judicial staff, the initiatives including the approval of the Judiciary Human Resources Policies and Procedure Manual 2014, continue to exist amidst serious training and human practice challenges on motivation, security, and adequacy of facilities. This paper discusses the initiatives that the Judiciary has put in place to attract and maintain the best human resource capital. It proposes that strategic investment in information and communication technology will help overcome the challenges as the Judiciary moves towards its identified strategic direction of quality judicial service.

The Role of Lay Judges in the Process of Adjudication

The paper attempts to expound upon the actual and statutory role of lay judges in the process of adjudication. A theoretical model was confronted with the practice of making judicial determinations. The authors analysed the state of the law on the matter and the functions of lay judges accorded thereto by the legislator. In addition, as a result of extensive sociological-legal studies, a typology of the moments of composing a judgment (i.e. during deliberations; in between cases; conversations with prosecutors; voluntary acceptance of liability (plea bargain)) and of types of deliberations present in Polish courts (deliberation without deliberation, deliberation dominated by the judge, deliberation pro forma, the ideal type, deliberation and a discussion – bargaining) is described.

Constitucionalismo débil = Weak-form judicial review

Resumen: Se suele denominar constitucionalismo “fuerte” al tipo de justicia constitucional predominante después de la segunda gran posguerra, el cual se caracteriza por otorga a los jueces (o a un tribunal especializado) el poder para inaplicar y/o invalidar aquellas leyes que los tribunales consideran contrarias a su interpretación de los derechos protegidos, pudiendo el legislador revocar o modificar las determinaciones judiciales únicamente mediante las mayorías cualificadas que se incluyen en un proceso formal de reforma constitucional. En esta entrada se presentan y discuten varias formas de constitucionalismo “débil”, cuyo rasgo distintivo común consiste en tratar de asegurar la primacía de los derechos básicos sobre el resto del ordenamiento jurídico (incluso mediante su “atrincheramiento” formal), sin asumir la supremacía de los jueces constitucionales en su interpretación. La discusión girará en torno a cuál es el significado preciso de la “debilitación” de los jueces constitucionales y, en consecuencia, cuál debería considerarse la forma más deseable para su articulación institucional.Palabras clave: Supremacía judicial, constitucionalismo débil, revisión judicial basada en derechos, deferencia debida.Abstract: The kind of constitutional justice which has been globally dominant since the end of the Second World War is usually termed ‘strong’ constitutionalism. It gives judges (or a specialized tribunal) the power to strike down legislation that they consider incompatible with their interpretation of those rights and, simultaneously, allows the legislature to override those judicial determinations only by gaining the qualified majorities included in a formal amending process. This entry expounds and discusses some ‘weak’ forms of judicial review, whose common distinctive character is aiming to ensure the supremacy of the basic rights over the rest of the legal system (even with their formal “entrenchment”), without assuming the judicial supremacy in their interpretation. The discussion will revolve around the precise sense of the “weakening” of the courts in a rights-based constitutional review, and which institutional design should be considered its most desirable form.Keywords: Judicial supremacy, weak-form judicial review, rights-based judicial review, due deference

Competing Institutional Perspectives in the Life of Glass–Steagall

A growing body of scholarship explores processes of gradual but transformative institutional change, classifying patterns of change into several categories. I argue that policymakers themselves actively contest the appropriate institutional frames for understanding changes as they seek to guide institutional change, and show that judicial determinations of statutory meaning are sensitive to judgments about which institutional perspective is most compelling. A process-tracing examination of institutional changes in the Glass–Steagall Act over the law's whole life span, from 1933 to 1999, provides a concrete example of how the dynamics of contestation can play out. Those who conceived of Glass–Steagall as the institutional embodiment of the separation between commercial and investment banking argued that expansion of commercial bank powers represented institutional drift. Alternatively, those who came to see Glass–Steagall as just one set of statutory imperatives to be handled within the larger institutional context of American banking law, including banking regulators, interpreted regulatory changes as constructive acts of conversion adapting to novel economic challenges. I document the slow process through which courts came to accept the second framing while noting how the fixity of statutory text nevertheless continued to limit available adaptations.

Foreign Law and Constitutional Rights in the US Courts of Appeals: Findings and Implications

Judicial reliance on foreign law has been hotly debated since the early 2000s, with commentators staking out competing positions on the role of foreign sources in con­stitutional interpretation. While the literature has been normative in focus, authors fre­quently incorporate empirical assumptions about how judges have used foreign law in practice. Yet scholars have done little empirical work to ground the debate and have fo­cused so predominantly on the Supreme Court that the US Courts of Appeals have been largely ignored. This study analyzes findings from a newly created database containing Courts of Appeals decisions relying on foreign law in deciding constitutional rights issues from the earliest cases to the present day. The surprising results include the low number of overall cases, the dearth of cases using foreign law to challenge accepted principles, and the absence of cases engaging the reasoning behind foreign judicial determinations. The findings serve as a jumping off point for the examination of normative concerns, including the risk of arbitrariness in judges’ decisions to rely on foreign law in particular cases.

Sham of the Moral Court? Testimony Sold as the Spoils of War

This paper analyses the critical influences on witness-based truth-telling for judicial decision-making in the international criminal tribunals. The judicial fixation on witness testimony reflects the weight and legitimacy given to personal testimony before international courts. This weight must be balanced by the awareness that a witness may provide false testimony intentionally, or may be coaxed by third parties to provide such testimony, as has been evidenced recently before the ICC. If witness testimony is tainted then its capacity to endorse the truth-finding function of the court is compromised. As a consequence the ability to assert that the tribunal is a ‘moral court’ based on empirical truth in such circumstances is jeopardized. The nexus between witness testimony, truth, the morality of judicial determinations, and the legitimacy this affords is explored in what follows. We question whether simple assertions that witness testimony, tested through adversarial examination, produces truth and resultant morality, are all they seem. The analysis also critiques the forensic reality of witness testimony before the international tribunals. Ultimately the paper suggests that while truthful testimony is crucial if international criminal trials are to produce legitimate judicial determinations, the naïve claim to a moral court as a consequence of tested witness testimony is problematic at least and unsustainable at best.