I. Introduction

An important part of the judicial system is the administration of the courts.  Court
administration deals with the day to day running of the individual courts.  Among the
jobs involved in court administration are:

1) Court Management:  the rotation of managing or chief judges who have
the authority to assign cases to other judges.  Associated with this heading of
court management is the appointment or election of judges to leadership
positions (to the position of managing or chief judge).

2) Role of the Judge:  what is the role of the judge,  particularly vis a vis the
prosecutor, the defense attorney and the private attorneys and litigants.

3) Statistics and Budgeting:  who decides who is responsible for compiling
judicial statistics and who is responsible for determining and setting the judicial
budget.

It should be recognized that although specifics of court administration can be
addressed in a constitution it is not unusual for many of the issues regarding court
administration to be specified in judicial laws or regulations that are separate from the
constitution.

II.  Court Management: Assignment of Cases

Who should assign the individual cases to specific judges and how should the
assignment of cases be done?  Under many legal systems the courts have a managing
or chief judge who makes the decisions regarding the assignment of cases. However, it
is not unusual in other countries for there to be an employee of the court whose sole
job is to manage and assign cases. One of the jobs of the chief or managing judge, or
the employee, would be to take individual cases and then schedule the case to be
before a certain judge. This scheduling of the case to certain judges could occur many
times in a single case. For example, a case could be assigned to a judge for pre-trial
motions (requests of the court for court orders prior to trial).  It could be assigned to
another judge for pre-trial conferences (formal or informal meetings with a judge to
discuss aspects of the case and settlement solutions for the case).Finally, a case could
be assigned to a judge to hear the case at trial.
 
What is most important in all of these assignment decisions is that the person assigning
the cases do so in a fair and impartial way. The person who assigns the cases, whether
it is the chief or presiding judge or another employee, must be certain to avoid all
conflicts of interest and all apparent conflicts of interest. There must be no appearance
of favoritism in the assignment of cases to any judge in any of the cases.

One of the ways of assuring that the assignment of cases remains impartial and fair is
through the rotation of judges or other employees. Each judge in the district, or each
qualified employee, would have the opportunity of making the decisions regarding the
assignment of cases. This rotation of individuals responsible for the assignment of cases
hopefully will ensure that no person retains too much control over the process.

The method of selection, while important, is probably less so than the rotation of the
person making the decision. However, the method of selection should be carefully
considered. There are usually two ways of selecting the judge (the method of selecting
an employer is usually less important because the presiding or chief judge will usually
retain the authority to make the final decision). The judge could be selected by either a
vote by other judges (secret or not) or by appointment. The appointment could come
from a judge responsible for administrative matters or by someone from the executive
branch or from the legislature.

III.  The Role of Judge

What is the role of a judge? Most people would respond: it is to decide disputes
between people who disagree. And, they would be right. But, as is often the situation
with the legal system, it is more complicated than that.

Judges will often find themselves dealing with the same lawyers, whether they are
prosecutors or private attorneys. However, the fact that judges know the attorneys
involved should not have an impact upon their rulings and eventual decisions. If the
judge feels that his relationship with a particular attorney is too close, too personal, he
should recuse (not hear) himself from cases the attorney is involved in (not hear the
case himself). The judge should also do this in cases involving a prosecutor who he
feels he is too close to.

All judges must maintain the appearance and, in fact be, completely impartial in their
position as judges.

Their role, in a healthy, fair, and just judiciary, is to ensure that all parties to a dispute
have the chance to be heard and have their positions known.  Obviously, any
relationship with any of the participants that would affect that impartiality must be
disclosed and the judge must not hear that case.

IV.  Statistics and Budgeting

Another issue that relates to court administration is deciding who and how statistics are
compiled and budgets are set.  While it might seem to be an unimportant issue,
bureaucratic in nature and boring (which in many ways it is), it is also an extremely
important issue.  Why?  Because the person who controls the statistics, controls the
budget.  And the person who controls the budget (and everybody probably has had
some experience with budgets) controls the size and power of the court.


Therefore it is important that those who have control over the finances (budget) and
statistics of the court system be as impartial as possible.

V.  Conclusion

The question of whether court administration is a constitutional issue remains. In many,
if not most, countries the administration of the court system remains a bureaucratic
issue and task and is not specified in the constitution. However, given the fragility of the
Albanian judicial system it may be that certain parts or even all aspects of court
administration need to be specified in the Albanian constitution.

The independence of the judiciary is of fundamental importance to every democratic
society. If Albanian judicial system is not strong enough to remain free from political
interference with the administration of the courts, it may be that very detailed
constitutional provisions are needed. It will be for Albanian to decide how much
constitutional protection their judicial system needs.

Submitted by CEELI Liaison John Kelley
American Bar Association (ABA) Central and East European Law Initiative (CEELI)
Rr. Ismail Qemali, Pall. 34, Ap. 2
Tirana, Albania
Phone:  355 42 346 24
Fax:  355 42 331 97
E-mail:  [email protected]