ABSTRACT
Accountability of the judiciary for its role in past governance takes for granted an important consensus. It is the recognition of the need, both at the national and international level, to ensure the judicial function plays an important role in ensuring the rule of law prevails within a democratic society. In the context of transitional societies, this is an important issue which reflects in efforts geared towards judicial reform at both levels. This chapter examines the normative underpinnings and actual practice of judicial reform in the context of transitional states. There is at least notional recognition within the international system for judicial reform or transformation as an important aspect of transitional justice processes. It also appears that the close involvement of the international system with transitional justice in post-authoritarian and post-conflict states has had a trickle-down effect on the national level. There is thus the unmistakable trend at that level to make judicial reform an important – even if in practice, merely symbolic – part of the institutional transformation agenda in such states. The process of political change which the third wave of democratization
represents has contributed significantly to the current prominence of the field of transitional justice. One of the defining features of the third wave of democratization has been a marked interest in legal and judicial reform in the states involved. Relevantly too, it has led to increased focus on constitutionalism not only in transitional states but all over the globe. This is as it should be. Legal and judicial reforms are usually important aspects of transitional justice processes in societies emerging from conflict and authoritarianism. Alongside mechanisms to obtain accounts of the past and to prosecute perpetrators of gross violations of human rights, efforts are also directed at ensuring the constitutionalization of human rights as a cardinal feature of the process of social change. In this, the role of judges in achieving the goal of transforming the post-conflict (or post-authoritarian) society becomes important. This has been the experience of post-communist countries of the CEE (Central and Eastern Europe).
