On 5 November 2021, an international online seminar was held on “Comparative Perspectives on the Reasoning of Judgments”. With the participation of close to 200 participants, the meeting brought together legal practitioners from seven countries of common law and civil law to discuss best practices with regards to the drafting of judgments reflecting adequate and sufficient reasoning in all criminal, civil and administrative fields.
Throughout the seminar, the participants were provided with an overview of the approach of different legal systems to the right to reasoned judgment, and relevant cases were studied. The focus of the event is in line with Goal 2.2 of the Action Plan on Human Rights in Turkey, “strengthening the right to a reasoned decision”, which is reflected both as a stand-alone goal and a cross-cutting theme throughout the Plan. This also echoes judgments of both the European Court of Human Rights and Turkish high courts, which have all raised concern about inadequate reasoning encountered at various stages of procedure. The outputs developed under the project will serve as complementary resource materials for the Turkish Justice Academy for the training course on reasoned decision.
The event was organised in partnership with the EU/CoE Joint Programme “Horizontal Facility for the Western Balkans and Turkey 2019-2022” and the EU/CoE Joint Project on “Strengthening the Criminal Justice System and the Capacity of Justice Professionals on prevention of the European Convention on Human Rights Violations in Turkey”. Prior to this event, field visits were conducted within the scope of the Horizontal Facility Programme to assess needs related to the right to a fair trial and the right to liberty and security, wherein recommendations were put forward including the need for regular training on reasoned judgments and the need to develop new means to ensure regular and systemic information about reasoned judgments for all branches of the judiciary. In addition, a prior meeting in this series had focused on raising awareness of an audience of first and second instance judges to adequate reasoning, while encouraging a broader discussion on the means to promote sufficient reasoning. Finally, under the Criminal Justice project, the modules on reasoned judgment for pre-service has been developed and development of in-service training modules is ongoing.
