Judges Discuss Justice Reform Without Hoping for Political Consensus

The judges begin the convention this Thursday to look outside, at threats to the world’s rule of law, as well as inside, debating their agenda for justice reform but with no hope of consensus, especially a political one.

The issue of reforming the justice system seems to be an eternal one, and Manuel Soares, president of the Association of Portuguese Syndicals (ASJP), does not believe that a consensus will ever be reached on this issue, primarily because no one can determine the reason for the reform. a crisis in which they all say that Justice is submerged, “and since no one defines the problem, it naturally becomes much harder to say what is being reformed, why it is being reformed, and how it is being reformed.”

It is also a sector in which “political parties are more prone to disagreement than consensus” with “party forces more interested in destruction than in not 10 or 20,” said the organizer of the congress, Luse.

“The possibility that someday there will be a consensus that allows us to say that this is a justice reform that needs to be done, and we all agree, this possibility is minimal, if it exists at all. So what’s left of it? Parliaments and governments are responsible for defining policies in the field of public justice,” he said, recalling that the President of the Republic recalled this in his opening remarks in the judicial year.

Manuel Soares understands that it is “excessive” to ask judges or members of other justice professions to take responsibility for the reform, not least because “the ball is on the other side”, on the side of the government, and the Justice Reform Program in the debate at the XII Congress Portuguese judges, promoted by the ASJP, are the contribution of these judges in presenting proposals and “seeking to influence the political agenda”.

“We are not the ones who approve the laws, and therefore we cannot force a government that does not seem to want to reform, we cannot force the reform process to begin,” said the judge presiding over the ASJP.

Manuel Soares has criticized a justice system that continues to operate on the assumptions it was created with in the 1980s and that “no longer provides an answer to some problems”, requiring adaptation and preparation for the future.

“There must be a moment when, if things go to the bottom, reform will be imposed due to circumstances, but then, probably, less deliberately. What happened in Hungary, Poland, in other countries, where the system is collapsing, ceases to work, no longer lives up to expectations, an authoritarian government appears, which takes advantage of the situation favorable for the introduction of gaps and creates justice in its own way, which then bears the name of justice and represents something else,” he warned.

The priority will be administrative justice, which “has been the focus of serious problems for 20 years and needs time to resolve,” said Manuel Soares, saying he doubted that the legislative package for this particular sector announced by the government for the coming months .

“I have no doubt that this is the most important area in our time of inefficiency and needs an answer. An answer that will not solve the problem in two or three years,” he said, recalling that the ASJP had submitted a proposal with about 10 million euros to improve the functioning of administrative justice within six years.

Manuel Soares also mentioned “another area of ​​inefficiency” without a “number” but with an impact on citizens’ trust, namely in media processes.

“There is no litigation with a known defendant that is resolved quickly. They go up, down, from court to court, from left to right, from incident to incident, back and forth from the judge’s acquittal, and drag on for years and years to their conclusion. when they do. And there are some that, I think, will not even end. The question is, does no one see this? No one has yet realized that there is a problem with these processes?” Manuel Soares criticized.

The ASJP president argues that one must look at these processes to learn lessons, to understand where the “blocking factors” and “procedural banana peels” that test judgments and lead to prescriptions are.

Without naming processes or defendants, Manuel Soares criticized the fact that it is possible to register 20 cases of refusal of a judge in the same court just because the inherent legal costs can be paid.

“This is just a procedural maneuver to bring the process before the statute of limitations expires, and then the person who is in this process can continue to give interviews, saying that he was a victim of the slowness of justice. It looks like a joke, doesn’t it?” he said.

“The only possible solution that I find is for the judge, faced with a violation of procedural law, to say: okay, the main proceedings are going to the end before the trial. All these issues of incidents, banana skins, failures, We are going to discuss here separately in another process. When we get to the end of the main process and there is an appeal, we will soon see if there was a small issue here that should have been better addressed. That’s all,” he concluded. .

The XII Congress of the Portuguese Judges will take place from 16 to 18 March in Funchal, Madeira, under the motto “Democracy, rights, development”, with an expected participation of about 600 judges, with human rights and reform program Justice in the program.