Vetting of Judges should be based on Clear Criteria and not the List: Syuzanna Soghomonyan

Vetting of Judges’ should be based on clear criteria and not the list. Ms Syuzanna  Soghomonyan, President of the Armenian Young Lawyers Association, member of the CSO Anti-Corruption Coalition of Armenia, anti-corruption expert, told Iravaban.net.

She noted that she had learned about the 2 November professional discussion entitled “Course of Judiciary Reform in Post-Revolution and Post-Election Armenia” that was organised within the framework of the operational program “Partnership for Open Society Initiative” of Open Society Foundations-Armenia from the media reports and even did not receive an invitation as a member of the coalition.

“I learned about the discussion from the press, where the so-called messages of the meeting were also published. To put it mildly, they do not hint at the effectiveness of the meeting, but rather about one more regular and formal meeting of the sort with which there is an attempt to give the impression that this time the reform judicial sphere will definitely be implemented. If there was such a tendency, will and desire, and the real goal was to ensure the internal and external independence and impartiality of the judiciary, including those of each judge, the integrity checking of judges, then the relevant roadmap already should have been presented to the professional community. And what do we have today – the failed implementation of the judicial strategy for 2019-2023 and a “list” of about 40-50 judges to pass vetting, which the Minister of Justice has been speaking about since his appointment. In any case, I do not know by what criteria and under what conditions that list was developed. Instead, I know that the vetting of judges should be carried out on the basis of clear criteria, all judges should be vetted by the bodies created for that purpose and not on the basis of a list compiled by the executive at its discretion,” Syuzanna Soghomonyan said.

The Minister of Justice Karen Andreasyan mentioned about that discussion during the briefing with the journalists in the National Assembly on 3 November. “Whoever understands something from vetting in this country, the smartest people gathered yesterday, we have not summed up the results yet, in 1-2 days they will present what the experts understood, whether it is possible or not. If it is possible, we will start working out a separate law on vetting in a few days, if it is not possible, then we will think about that issue together with the constitutional reforms.”

The anti-corruption expert, referring to what was said, mentioned, “One of the main reasons for the failure of the reforms is that the discussions are actually attended by “people who understand something about vetting”, and not by the experts who are at the roots of transitional justice, systemic proposals for vetting in the judiciary and the roadmap. Back in late 2018, the CSO Anti-Corruption Coalition of Armenia carried out large-scale work, studying the experience of 35 countries that have implemented transitional justice tools, which had both successful and failed experiences. These results were presented during the Parliamentary hearings, and one of the three key speakers was representative of the CSO sector, who represented the Armenian Lawyers’ Association – the Coordinating Secretariat of the Coalition. Then, taking into account the experiences of other countries and the Armenian context, we studied and presented a more targeted study, which refers to the implementation of vetting in the judiciary.

“Unfortunately, the decision-makers take a few points from a whole systemic roadmap, start implementing them in a distorted way and then announce that we have introduced serious tools for integrity checking of judges. Do you not understand that these partial and situational solutions cannot lead to serious systemic reforms? After all, the judiciary is not a testing ground for an official appointed every few months to make changes under the term “reform” according to their tastes and perceptions.

“By the way, I would like to note that the proposals voiced as a result of that discussion have been included in the solutions proposed by us a long time ago, but that they are not a few or fragmentary, but systemic, in order to implement the reforms completely and invulnerably,” she said.

As a follow-up to this work, on 1 November, 2021, the CSO Anti-Corruption Coalition of Armenian and the Armenian Lawyers’ Association published two joint expert studies on the following key issues:

1. “Integrity Checking and Responsibility of Judges under the extraordinary conditions (of transitional justice): International experience and mechanisms for implementation in Armenia.”
2. “Guarantees of Judicial Independence and Effective Functioning of the Court: International Experience and Mechanisms for Implementation in Armenia.”

These studies are, in fact, a review of previous work and adaptation to the current situation.

The First study examined the mechanisms of Integrity Checking and Responsibility of judges in condition of emergency (transitional justice); International standards and basic standards for judicial reforms, including judicial vetting; International experience of judicial reforms, including judicial vetting by countries. Integrity Checking and Responsibility of judges in the Republic of Armenia under the extraordinary conditions (of transitional justice) was also studied, and on the basis of it the roadmap of mechanisms for conducting Integrity Checking of judges in the Republic of Armenia with short-term and long-term actions was proposed.

The Second study focuses on international experience of the legal status of judges, the role of the Supreme Judicial Council (SJC) in guaranteeing the independence of courts and judges. The experience of more than 15 countries was studied in its framework. Further, a roadmap on the basis of international and national experience was developed to increase the role of the SJC and implement priority reforms in the context of guaranteeing the independence of Armenian courts and judges.

Moreover, these studies have been developed by methods that will assist the relevant bodies of the Republic of Armenia in the implementation of real and systemic reforms in the judicial sphere of.

If we refer to the content of the proposals; they are short-term in nature (can be implemented through legislative changes) and long-term (should be implemented through constitutional amendments), and refer to the abolition of the power of the Minister of Justice to initiate actions against judges; analysis of declarations on property and income; ECHR judgments to review deadlines for initiating disciplinary actions against judges resolving the principle of prohibition of the use of retroactive effect by transitional provisions of the Constitution. Other proposals include the balancing of non-judge members from the public sector in the Ethics and Disciplinary Committee of the General Assembly of Judges and other committees, and the establishment of new requirements for the incompatibility of judges, conditions for early retirement, etc.

One of the key proposals is the provision of transitional provisions of the principle of prohibition of retroactive effect within the framework of the Constitution, which will allow initiating proceedings against judges on the basis of decisions made by the ECHR earlier. The same transitional provisions will also apply to analyze of the judge’s property and income declarations submitted before 2017,” the anti-corruption expert said.