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Roundtable Meeting of Chief Justices and Ministers of Justice
Panel Presentation and DiscussionPanel discussants at the afternoon session were Chief Justice A.T.M. Afzal of Bangladesh, Chief Justice Gerard Brennan of Australia, Chief Justice Thomas Eichelbaum of New Zealand and Minister of Law and Justice Ramakant D. Khalap of India. Chief Justice A.T.M. Afzal of Bangladesh asked directly how best could the Asian Development Bank makes its services available to its developing member countries to support legal and judicial reform, and how well can such lending and technical assistance be utilized? He referred to the fact that courts and judges were not trained through judicial training institutes incourt management and that traditionally technology had not been applied to court management. He called for a focus on long-term issues such as human resource development, especially basic and continuing legal training, judicial administration, technology for legal and judicial practice, and physical infrastructure for the judiciary and government legal offices. Chief Justice Gerard Brennan of Australia underscored the diversity and disparities among and within the legal systems of the region and called for greater attention to understanding and enhancing the key roles of constituent members of the legal system. He noted that courts had a broader role than their contribution to the efficiency of the economy, and that the judicial endeavor was probably best expressed in the "judicial virtues" of competence, integrity and independence. He referred to the need for regular meetings of judges, including lower level judges so that the judiciary exchanged knowledge at a regional and subregional level in a better way. He also suggested a possible role for the Asian Development Bank in creating a regional center for the arbitration of commercial disputes or a regional clearing house to coordinate the efforts of existing arbitration centers in the region. He noted that, at present, there were substantial problems with the enforcement of arbitral awards domestically in many countries of the region. Chief Justice Thomas Eichelbaum of New Zealand endorsed mandatory continuing legal training for government lawyers and judges as a valuable form of human resource development and progress in implementing legal reform. He noted that it is crucial that judicial training remain or be established under the control of the judiciary, an important step and component in the realization or safeguarding of judicial independence. In this regard, he described New Zealand's experience in establishing its new Institute of Judicial Studies. Minister of Law and Justice Ramakant Khalap of India noted the fiftieth anniversary of the independence of India. He also noted "fifty years of difficulties" in legal and judicial work in India, but said that reforms and a strengthening of the legal system were well underway. New conciliation and arbitration, taxation, commercial and company statutes and amendments were being enacted. Court congestion remained a severe problem, he said, reaching over forty million cases if all relevant courts were included in the data. He indicated that the situation was being ameliorated by online access to statutory and case law, the spread of computerization from the Supreme Court to provincial higher courts and other measures. Legal training was also being restructured, and a year of specialized training after law school graduation was being popularized. A National Judicial Academy had been founded and was initiating training for various levels of the judiciary. Judicial salaries had also been revised. He called for the provision, through regional research and dialogue, of capsule model laws in economic law and other areas, and lauded the importance of cross-pollination of legal ideas and law reform plans. The discussion which followed focused on Chief Justice Afzal's question - "How can the Asian Development Bank best make its services available?" - supplemented by discussion of Bank directions, priorities and approaches in its Law and Development programming. Several participants underscored the importance of strengthening judicial education and the utility of local judicial institutions. Several Pacific representatives called for the establishment of a permanent judicial education institute to serve the Pacific states, Australia and New Zealand. Particular emphasis was placed on the need for such an institute to provide training of magistrates who represent the lowest level of the judiciary and the level of the judicial system with which most citizens dealt. Other participants discussed the importance of reviewing diverse legal models and approaches in devising law reform strategies and plans, as well as legislation, and called for greater Bank efforts to assist developing member countries in making extensive, detailed, sophisticated, low cost and up-to-date legal information fully accessible to judges, law drafters, government lawyers and legal scholars in its developing member countries.
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