Judicial reform is the complete or partial political reform of a country's judiciary. Judicial reform can be connected to a law reform, prison reform, police reform or part of wider reform of the country's political system.[1]
Areas of the judicial reform often include: codification of law instead of common law, moving from an inquisitorial system to an adversarial system, establishing stronger judicial independence with changes to court administration such as judicial councils or changes to appointment procedure, establishing mandatory retirement age for judges or enhancing independence of prosecution.
Aspirations of judicial reform include an increase of the independence of the judiciary and separation of powers, increased speed of justice, increased fairness of justice,[2] and improved impartiality.[3]
Recent decades have seen a surge in the birth of "supraterritorial institutions and associations",
[23] that have been gathered by their enactment of
common law and practices.
European Union's regional expansion into Southeastern Europe to include
Romania is one such example. The community of European states has enacted treaties that have allowed them to unite politically and economically.
The reform was launched in 2014 after the
Revolution of Dignity and the
2014 Ukrainian presidential election. The purpose of the reform is to bring the judiciary of Ukraine to European standards and to ensure the protection of the rights, freedoms and legitimate interests of citizens through timely, effective and fair resolution of legal disputes on the basis of the rule of law.
[24]
Melcarne, Alessandro; Ramello, Giovanni B.; Spruk, Rok (2021). "Is justice delayed justice denied? An empirical approach". International Review of Law and Economics. 65: 105953. doi:10.1016/j.irle.2020.105953.
Riasanovsky, Nicholas V. (1984). A History of Russia (4th ed.). Oxford University Press. p. 377. ISBN 978-0-19-503361-8 – via Internet Archive. The reform of the judiciary which was largely the work of the Minister of Justice Dmitry Zamyatin, his extremely important assistant Serge Zarudny, and several other enlightened officials, proved to be the most successful of the 'great reforms'. Almost overnight it transformed the Russian judiciary from one of the worst to one of the best in the civilized world. / Later the government tried on occasion to influence judges for political reasons, and, what is more important, in its struggle against radicalism and revolution it began to withdraw whole categories of legal eases from the normal procedure of 1864 and to subject them to various forms of the courts martial. But, while the reform of the judiciary could be restricted in application, it could not be undone by the imperial government, and, as far as the reform extended, modem justice replaced arbitrariness and confusion. Russian legal reform followed Western, especially French, models, but, as Kucherov and others have demonstrated, these models were skillfully adapted to Russian needs It might be added that the courts, as well as the zemstvo institutions, acquired political significance, for they served as centers of public interest and enjoyed a somewhat greater freedom of expression than was generally allowed in Russia.
Manfred Steger, Globalization: A very short introduction, p. 64