Judicial Self-Governance Index: The Role of Court Presidents in Judicial Governance

Although frequently described as primus inter pares, we know that court presidents have a special position in the systems of judicial governance. They hold, both formally and informally, various sets of powers related to decisions on selection, judicial career, disciplinary proceedings, day-to-day administration of courts, budgets or communication with media, politicians, and public. We also know that the extent of competence and a share of power court-presidents have on judicial governance very much varies depending on the particular legal and political culture, separation of powers, institutional safeguards of judicial independence, trends of decentralisation and de-concentration of powers, increasing judicial empowerment as well as the existence of a judicial council. While judicial councils were long equated with the rise of judicial self-governance, as we demonstrated (Šipulová et al 2022), in reality, judicial governance is much more vibrant field with many actors participating on the distribution of competences. However, compared to scholarship on judicial council, the research engaging with these actors remains very limited. In this paper, we bridge the gap by offering a dynamic insight at interactions of actors’ inside the judicial governance, and map the ability of court presidents to utilise their influence in informal networks and practices. In doing so, we build on our previous work on “JSG Index”, which maps extent of competences related to judicial governance held by judges, and zero in on court presidents. First, using the cases of Czech Republic, Germany, Italy and Slovakia, we map the presence of court presidents in the formal regulation of individual competences and dimensions of judicial governance, and development of their powers vis-à-vis emerging judicial councils. We ask how the presence of judicial council impacted de jure position of court presidents in different dimensions (personal competences, selection and promotion of judges, disciplining, case assignment and case management, communication with public, negotiation and administration of budget, etc.). Second, we compare the results of the JSG Index against the traditional understanding of the role of court presidents in all four countries. Building on existing data, as well as our own expert interviews, we map informal influence of court presidents and suggest a method to measure de facto powers. We argue that court presidents are able to utilize various informal networks to magnify their de facto powers, which differ significantly from formally presumed judicial bureaucratic roles assigned to them by the law. Finally, the paper also explains why in some countries, court presidents are motivated to create more of these informal networks and while in others, they stick quite close to the original formal powers.