Relying on the Courts: About Collegiate Collaboration in Courts as a Counterbalance to Professional Hierarchy and as a Necessary Precondition for Efficiently Delivering, Timely and Consistent Justice

Abstract

Hierarchy in judiciaries can be a threat for judicial independence, especially when control of judicial behavior can be triggered by complaints and the influence of politics, directly or via appointments and promotions to the highest positions is likely. Such hierarchy enforces conformity in judges and prevents them from initiating cooperation and changes in the organizational functioning of the courts. In order to make a judiciary more resilient against such external pressures, the inevitable hierarchy should be complemented by different kinds of cooperation between judges in the courts. This cooperation can be about procedural guidelines, judicial ethics, quality standards, case law, etc. I illustrate this by describing several projects to improve the functioning of the courts in Greece, Ukraine and the Netherlands. One of the hypotheses I conclude this article with, is that when no initiatives are visible in the (lower) courts to improve the functioning of the judicial process or the court organization, that may be an indication that the effects of hierarchical controls prevent judges from cooperating on the shopfloor. Because in such hierarchies it is difficult for judges to know from each other how they manage and decide similar cases, society cannot rely on the courts to manage and decide cases predictably.