This file is based on a  study session organised by the CEPEJ on 9 December 2009. 

The contributions have been published in the 6th CEPEJ Newsletter (March 2010).

Note: The documents conserved their origial oral form as presented during the 14th CEPEJ plenary meeting on 9 and 10 December 2009 in Strasbourg.

General introduction: justice as a public service

Jean-Paul JEAN, Prosecutor, Court of Appeal of Paris, Associated Professor at the Law faculty of Poitiers, France, Chairman of the CEPEJ-GT-EVAL

• What is a public service ? What has justice in common with any other public service, what are its specificities ? The expectations of the court users have changed, they ask the courts to be performant and to take decisions in a reasonable time. Cultural differences about management and measurement have to be respected.

How to measure court performance while safeguarding the fundamental principles of justice?

François PAYCHERE, Judge at the Court of justice of the Geneva canton, Switzerland, Chairman of the CEPEJ-GT-QUAL

• The principle of independence : what are its relations to the measurement of court performance ? What have responsibility and responsible management to do with it ? Why is important that judges participate in the organization, the diffusion and the use of the results ?

Is there a relationship between court size and court performance?

Georg STAWA, Public Prosecutor, Directorate for Central Administration and Coordination, Federal Ministry of Justice, Austria, Member of the CEPEJ-GT-EVAL

• Discussing the optimum court system always raises the question if there is a relationship between court size and court performance: Are smaller courts inefficient or delivering the court-services close to the people’s needs ? Are bigger courts serving as highly specialized units or working like inflexible dinosaurs ? Austrian findings on length of procedures trimming the court system combined with the use of CEPEJ’s benchmarks might give some answers…

Is it possible to measure court performance? The lessons from the evaluation system in the Netherlands

Frans van der DOELEN, Programme Manager, Department of the Justice System, Ministry of Justice, The Netherlands, Member of the CEPEJ-GT-EVAL

• The Modernization law of 2002 is a success : the courts are more productive and the users are more satisfied. But, why the judges do they complain ? The speecher delivers interesting insights to the experiences made with the modernization law in the Netherlands.

Towards CEPEJ's indicators of court performance? Presentation of preliminary work

Georg STAWA, Public Prosecutor, Directorate for Central Administration and Coordination, Federal Ministry of Justice, Austria, Member of the CEPEJ-GT-EVAL

• Court Performance: Why and what to measure? Based on the need to measure court-performance the decision what exactly to measure in daily judicial life without interfering judicial independence triggered the work of CEPEJ the last two years.
  Let's have a look on indicators regarding workload, time-frames and quality of courts!

New management policies in the courts of the Russian Federation

Vyacheslav PANTELEEV, President of the Odintsovo City Court of the Moscow Region

• The Odintsovo City Court, the most important court of the region which handle over 30'000 cases a year, introduced in August 2008 as a pilot a computer program called Justice (Pravosudie) to manage the automatic assignment of cases and their following. It allows to produce easily analyses of the situation: movement of the cases and of persons, charge of work of the judges. Thanks to internet, most information is accessible to the public

Other useful links

• Examples of Court Performance Measurement Tools, Appendix B in: International Framework for Court Excellence
• Robert D. Behn, Why Measure Performance? Different Purposes Require Different Measures, Public Administration Review, September/October 2003, Vol. 63, No 5, 586-606
• Richard Y. Schauffler, Judicial accountability in the US State courts, Measuring court performance
• Trial Court performance Standards and Measurement system of the National Center for State Courts (NCSC)