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Reseña:
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Efforts to reform judicial systems around the world have continued with unabated vigor for at least four decades. In the United States and in Europe such efforts produced an array of reforms commencing in the 1960s and lasting at least through the 1970s. Beginning with California in 1960, for example, by 1979 every U.S. state but one had created one or more judicial commissions to set standards and deal with complaints of misconduct against individual state judges.1 Although the United States Congress eschewed the state approach of establishing commissions for such purpose, in 1980, the Judicial Conduct and Disability Act gave the chief judge for each circuit responsibility for disciplinary oversight of all federal judges within the circuit in conjunction with a special committee comprising of the chief judge and an equal number of circuit and district judges.2By the end of the 1980s the attention of the judicial reform movement had shifted to Latin America, and subsequently, after the collapse of the Soviet Union to Eastern Europe, then to Central, South and Southeast Asia, and most recently to the Middle East.Assessment of the results of these myriad judicial reform efforts remains mixed. As illustrated by the views expressed by Judge Peter Messitte and Linn Hammergren in the preceding issue of the Washington University Global Studies Law Review,20 a few observers see meaningful gains while others remain considerably more pessimistic.21 My purpose in this Article is not to attempt to resolve such contrasting views or even to suggest how best to proceed in assessing judicial reforms overall or in particular regions or countries. Rather, my aim here is more modest. I wish simply to attempt to identify a few underlying problems that appear to inhibit effective reforms from achieving broadly shared goals. In so doing, I suggest a research agenda designed to develop feasible solutions. |
