The President of the Supreme says that “to wait a long time” reforms and asks to act

The President of the Supreme Court (STJ), Enrique Araujo, said this Saturday that “the wait for a real justice reform is already long”, called for action and the use of constitutional review to restructure the system.

“This is the moment when the political leaders of the country should take a closer look at justice and initiate legislative processes for the reform of justice, listening to all those who work in this field,” Enrique Araujo said this Saturday at the closing of the XII Congress of Portuguese Judges held in Funchal since Thursday.

Referring to the proposals of the Associação Sindical dos Juízes Portugal (ASJP) for the reform of the sector, which paint a “comprehensive picture of measures that could improve the functioning of the system”, even acknowledging that they are only possible “with political consensus and a regime of pacts”, and pointed to the ongoing constitutional review as the “ideal” moment for making “substantial changes to the organizational model of the courts and their governing and disciplinary bodies”.

“However, it seems to me that this opportunity will be missed,” he said.

While acknowledging that the ASJP set of proposals is “understandably unfeasible in the short term”, he defended that it is “crucial to layer priorities”, not least because he believes that “it is impossible to achieve the implementation of the most urgent measures depend on the law of equity programming”. “.

“The real reform of justice is a long time coming, which cannot be limited to the modernity of some topics, such as digitization or the use of artificial intelligence in the courts. This is the moment to make important decisions in the field of justice,” he said.

The STJ president also deplored the aggressive criticism that was directed against people and lacked constructive meaning, emphasizing that “form has substance.”

“It is true that these times are marked by distrust, great anxiety and impatience. We live in what a well-known scholar of political and social philosophy calls “annoyed democracy,” in which criticism is, so to speak, uncritical, to the extent that it carries only a load of resentment or anxiety, without useful content. Since this type of purely destructive criticism is common in Portugal, little progress in implementing the ideas is explained,” he said.

Enrique Araujo also expressed regret that in “Justice” decisions are built “against each other” and not “with each other.”

“The time has come to act. Together. with each other,” he concluded.