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Searching for Success in Judicial Reform

Voices from the Asia Pacific Experience

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Armytage L. and Metzner L. (Editors)

Oxford University Press 2009 ISBN-13: 978-0-19-806077-2.

This unique and timely volume presents the collective reform experience of some of the Asia Pacific region’s most skilled judges, court administrators, legal scholars and researchers.

The publication comprises provoking analyses of recent judicial reform programmes undertaken by a cross-section of Forum countries, with contributions from: Deputy Chief Justice Prof Dr Paulus Lotulung, Indonesia; Justice Dr Ananda Bhattarai, Nepal; Justice Kim Sathavy, Cambodia; Prof Dr Mohan Gopal, India; Prof Myrna Feliciano, Philippines; Ms Ayesha Dias, India and Sri Lanka; Ms Zenaida Elepano, Philippines; Ms Anita Jowitt, Vanuatu; Mr Ly Tayseng, Cambodia; Mr Aria Suyudi, Indonesia; and Mr Hari Phuyal, Nepal.

These papers provide a wealth of insights relevant across the region that address many of the modern challenges of justice: exclusion, delay, corruption and incompetence.  Analysis of this experience indicates the existence of ten themes, or overarching challenges, which have confronted the passage of judicial reform over recent years.  These relate to goals, leadership, independence, capacity for change, training, integration, community, donors, data and results.  Any serious contemplation of judicial reform should acknowledge the challenges of practice evidenced in the experience of authors in this collection. 

Understanding of judicial reform has evolved over recent years, in line with international development assistance and the growing recognition that the policy, governance and institutional dimensions play crucial roles in shaping development.  Economic thinking has traditionally prevailed to cast the state, and the judiciary as a key institution, in an instrumentalist role to support development of markets.  More recently, this approach is yielding to growing recognition of the imperative to evolve a more human-centred pro-poor vision for judicial reform.  At the same time, understanding and appreciation of the complexity of the political economy environment has also deepened with this experience. 

Donors’ continuing support for judicial reform reflects the growing recognition of the importance of justice to societal wellbeing, and is on what may be fairly be described as a continuing journey of development understanding.  Over the past decade in particular, many countries in the region have laid important but as yet uneven foundations in judicial reform which are characterised by both their development merit and their greater potential.  These foundations, and their fragility, are to be appreciated by citizens, governments, donors and reform practitioners alike. 

Educating Judges*

Introduced by Sir Anthony Mason, Chief Justice of Australia 1987-1995
Kluwer Law International (London, Boston, The Hague), 1996

This seminal monograph provides a comprehensive study of judicial education, and forms a part of major collections around the world, including the Bodleian Library, University of Oxford, Harvard Law School and the University of Sydney.

Chief Justice of Australia, Robert French, quoted from "Educating Judges" in his paper at The Fourth International Conference on the Training of the Judiciary, Sydney 6 October 2009.