3 March, Chairs of the Departments during the Plenary Session on annual report of work of the Supreme Court pointed out that the reform of so-called “clean” three-instance court system and the related regulatory framework have highlighted the issue of transparency of selection of judges of departments and substantiation of individual solutions, as well as role of departments in this process.

Chair of the Department of Civil Cases EDITE VERNUSA indicated that the special procedure, stipulated in transitional provisions of the law "On Judicial Power" for filling vacancies of judges, restricts the ability to select judges in an open competition to ensure that judges working at the cassation instance are best suited for specifics of judicial work at cassation instance, namely, for in-depth research and solving of legal issues. Current statutory benefits for judges of former appellate instance - the Chambers of the Supreme Court – could be preserved, but only in the case when their qualifications are assessed as being equally high as qualification of other candidates. "It means – one competition would be announced for vacant position of a judge of the department, but in case of similar evaluation of professional qualification the priority would be given to former judges of the Chambers. In addition, regarding such a competition, it would be important to provide that opinion of the Department serves as necessary precondition for evaluation of candidate for position of a judge of the Supreme Court. This could be one solution," said the Chair of the Department.

Another option for selection of judges of departments, considering their experience and their knowledge of professional capacity of the lower courts judges, as well as their knowledge of professional and academic achievement of experienced lawyers, prosecutors and legal scholars, would be to assign the central role to opinion of the judges of the department. Namely, the department itself would select candidate for a vacant position. For implementation of such solution the internal procedure of the department should be elaborated in order to reach consensus; it would be in line with the procedure that existed before the reform of the Chambers of the Court.

Chair of the Department of Civil Cases considers that the Ministry of Justice should be addressed on issue of the necessary amendments to the law "On Judicial Power", in order to ensure that candidates for position of judges of the Supreme Court are selected in the fairest competition. Furthermore, the Council for the Judiciary should address issue on greater involvement of departments in selection of judges.

Chair of the Department of Administrative Cases VERONIKA KRUMINA supported the proposal of the colleague from the Department of Civil Cases to strengthen the role of the Departments of the Supreme Court in selection of candidates for position of a judge.

"Judges working at departments are the ones who evaluate rulings of judges of lower courts on a daily basis. It is that judges of departments get the most complete picture of quality of lower courts judges’ rulings, which is one of the most important criteria for evaluating the candidate for office at the Supreme Court," said Veronika Krumina.  "In addition, a judge of the Supreme Court as a judge of the court of cassation should at the highest rate embody the values ​​that form the national identity of Latvia and act in a way to encourage public confidence in the judiciary. In addition to the professional skills the judge of the Supreme Court must be humane and have high professional standards. Judges of departments are the ones who can in the best way evaluate candidates for judicial position, when assessing them from the mentioned perspective. Consequently, the evaluation carried out by judges of departments in comparison to any other authority's evaluation is more objective, qualitative and more comprehensive."

Chair of the Department of Administrative Cases admitted to be very critical when using competition as tool for selection of judges of the Supreme Court. In her view, the competition as a selection tool does not guarantee that the most professional candidates apply. Therefore the possibility to address candidates without organizing competition should be considered broader. As well experience of other countries shows that judges of the higher instance court are selected by the highest instance court itself.

"The Supreme Court will never be a natural stage of career development for a judge of a lower court, since a good judge of first instance or appellate court may not be a good judge of cassation court," said the Chair of the Department.

           

More about the Plenary Session of 3 March:

 

Information prepared by

Rasma Zvejniece, the Head of the Division of Communication of the Supreme Court

E-mail: rasma.zvejniece@at.gov.lv, telephone: +371 67020396, +371 28652211