Pitfalls in Data Gathering to Assess Judiciaries

Marco Fabri

doi:10.18352/ijca.278

Abstract

This paper is divided into two parts plus some concluding remarks. The first one deals with some problems in comparing the number of judges, court personnel, and caseflow in European judiciaries. Data come from the Commission for the Efficiency of Justice (CEPEJ) of the Council of Europe. The second part deals with some pitfalls in the data gathering carried out by the European Network of Councils for the Judiciary (ENCJ) in the attempt to measure judicial independence and accountability. Each case study brings some hints, summed up in the concluding remarks, that may be useful to improve both exercises.

Highlights

This paper is divided into two parts plus some concluding remarks
Among the 2016-2017 European Network of Councils for the Judiciary (ENCJ) activities, a specific group dealt with the challenge to measure judicial independence and accountability in each participating country with a scorecard
The first one was submitted to Judicial Councils, or other administration of justice bodies, and it was aimed to collecting data on the formal legal setting of judicial independence and accountability

Summary

Introduction

This paper is divided into two parts plus some concluding remarks. The first one deals with some problems in comparing the number of judges, court personnel, and caseflow in European judiciaries. The first part of this work addresses the comparability of some data coming from the most comprehensive data collection on the functioning of European judiciaries carried out by the Commission for the Efficiency of Justice (CEPEJ) of the Council of Europe.3 These data are often used to make comparisons across countries, and they are used in the European Union Justice Scoreboard. This is a unique collection of data and information about the functioning of European judicial systems since 2004, which has no equal in any other study carried out by international organizations or researchers.

Results

Conclusion