Report says senior judicial appointments should be for fixed, non renewable terms

THE Chief Justice and the Presidents of the High, Circuit and District Courts should be appointed for a fixed seven year term which would be non renewable, according to the second interim report of the Working Group on a Courts Commission.

Such a change would bring the terms of appointment of "these critically important positions" into line "with what is now accepted as normal practice in other areas of public and professional life" the report says.

Creating a maximum seven year tenure could significantly improve the administration of the court system, the commission believes.

The proposal is among the report's main recommendations, and the Department of Justice describes it as perhaps the "most radical".

According to the Department, the Minister for Justice, Mrs Owen, has obtained "Government acceptance in principle" for the proposal, subject to its constitutionality.

The report also calls for debate and consultation on the "critically important" area of judicial case management. This procedure involves more direct court intervention in civil cases to resolve litigation as early as possible.

The Supreme Court judge, Mrs Justice Denham, chairs the commission, and its 15 members include four other judges. The Minister established it in November to review the courts system. The second report continues the review and makes recommendations for improved management of the system and its resources.

According to the report, the Court President would remain a judge in the particular court until retirement, after the seven year term was up. The proposal would not affect current office holders, the commission says.

It stresses that the term of office should not be renewable. It would be extremely undesirable if the holders of such offices were exposed to the criticism that they were influenced in their decisions by the hope of serving a second term.

In making the recommendation the commission said it seemed "wrong in principle" that the government should find itself in the position of appointing a president for a period of anything up to 20 years, "or else excluding from consideration judges who may be better qualified than others to hold the office in question".

It was considerably less important in the past that judges held court presidencies for lengthy periods because "the workload was far less demanding".

If a judge held a court presidency for "many, many years", for instance, it seemed inevitable "in the nature of things" that the judge would "become progressively less responsive to the need for change and less energetic in the implementation of change".

Currently, the only way to avoid that problem "is the appointment of a judge who is not too far off the retiring age".

The Government has accepted in principle the commission's first report and promised speedy implementation, the report says.

"When this happens, the administrative responsibilities of the Presidents will be significantly increased. It will, accordingly, be even more important for the judges best qualified to hold these positions to be appointed to them by the government."

In its report the commission also calls for greater flexibility in the management of resources so that a court president could ask a judge to manage specific areas such as co ordinating the family courts or the listing of cases.

The commission plans a full debate and consultation process on judicial case management before making final recommendations.