Judiciary Raport

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CENTRE OF EXPERTISE IN JUDICIARY @ TRANSPARENCY INTERNATIONAL ROMANIA 4
introduction
This Guide provides judicial officials and decision-makers with a reference framework for consolidating
integrity within the judiciary and for judicial reform, where this is required. It also provides civil society
with a set of benchmarks against which they can hold their national judiciaries accountable and to
help drive their advocacy efforts.
The judiciary can be defined, in the broad sense, as the system of courts of law and the people who
operate within it, as well as, the prosecution service and the people who operate within it, irrespective
of their formal status in a certain jurisdiction.
Over the past decades, corruption has proven to be the invisible enemy of modern democracies. Bad
governance, abuses of state power, endemic corruption and the inability of poor and marginalized to
remedy injustices are threatening peace, security and sustainable development all around the globe.
The judiciary itself has faced corruption in two different ways – corruption of its own members, and
detecting, prosecuting, adjudicating and sanctioning corruption by others.
Functioning judiciaries can effectively safeguard the rule of law and limit the devastating societal
impacts of corruption. For this reason the Transparency International movement’s global strategic
priority is to recognize the urgent need for robust judicial systems to prevent and punish corruption.
A judiciary committed to integrity, independence and accountability is more likely to listen to the
marginalized, uphold individual rights, and sanction corruption than those who are stealing public
money to enrich themselves.
Building on the already existing international consensus, this Guide references several international,
regional and global standards and principles to ensure a broad application to a variety of judiciary
models. It also builds on Transparency International`s 2007 ‘Global Corruption Report: Corruption
and Judicial Systems’ and its accompanying ‘Diagnostic Checklist for Assessing Safeguards against
Judicial Corruption1, as well as on Transparency International’s National Integrity System paradigm 2.
The Guide also circulated among reputable TI and non TI experts and institutional partners to whom
we would like to thank for their invaluable contribution.
As such, this Guide synthetises existing standards and principles regarding the composition
of judiciaries and the conduct of its members to encourage independence, transparency and
accountability. Annex I provides a detailed inventory of international documents in which the principles
and standards provided by this Guide have their roots.
Bringing to fruition the existing TI knowledge, this Guide is the initial step of a broader TI global
initiative on the ‘Integrity, Independence and Accountability of the Judiciary’, through a dedicated
Centre of Expertise. Building on the experience gained by TI in many countries, as well as on the
expertise of its individual members or other organisations, the Centre aims at further developing a
second generation of practical tools and approaches to facilitate the work in this sector and support
the existing advocacy efforts.
Our approach is to engage a diverse spectrumof actors - judicial practitioners, executive and legislative
officials, representatives of international donors, leaders of the business community, civil society and
regular citizens - at both the national and international level, to collectively demand change within the
judiciary and to hold it accountable for successes and failures in sanctioning corruption. Annex II of
the Guide provides an inventory of the work done by TI Chapters with regard to the judiciary, while
Annex III contains a non-exhaustive inventory of the international judicial stakeholders.
1. Transparency International (2007). Global Corruption Report 2007: Corruption and Judicial systems.
judicial_systems
Transparency International Diagnostic Checklist (2007). Diagnostic Checklist for Assessing Safeguards against Judicial
Corruption, Combating Corruption in Judicial Systems: Advocacy Toolkit, pages 23-32.
reading/transparency-international-advocacy-toolkit-combating-corruption-in-judicial-systems/
2.