The Gazette 1993

v i e w p o i I n | t | Why the Courts Service Needs an Executive Agency

GAZETTE

MIWH NOVEMBER 1993

civil servants in the Department of Justice. Each of the four court levels - District, Circuit, High and Supreme - is, in reality, a separate and distinct entity; the clerical and administrative staff - the court officials and registrars - work with the judges providing administrative backup and support; there is no real mobility of staff between any of the court levels. Moreover, no one officer in any of the courts has responsibility for the overall efficiency of the service. A unified courts service and the Executive Agency concept would address these shortcomings. In our view, there is no reason why the quest for improved administrative efficiency should undermine, in any way, the j independence of the judiciary. There j is no conflict between them. The management functions we are taking about do not involve interfering with the freedom of the President of the High Court to allocate judges to cases or to administer the lists as he sees fit. We would have thought that the judges themselves would see advantage in having on their side a senior official who would have a direct link with the Minister and whose task it would be, working in co-operation with the judges, to put forward proposals for change and to seek to secure the best possible deal, in terms of finance and other resources, from the Minister and the Department of Finance. That person would also be responsible for the development of a programme of modernisation and refurbishment of our courthouses and for speeding up the computerisation of the courts. We would support the view of the Law Society and the Bar Council that there is a fundamental distinction between the respective roles of officials, who are civil servants, in the administration of the courts service and that of the judiciary whose task it Continued overleaf

We have referred before in these pages to the neglect that has occurred over the years in the courts service and the urgent need, as we see it, for the Government to take action to improve the situation. Recently, at the initiative of the then President of the Society, Raymond Monahan , the Society and the Bar Council co-operated in the preparation and submission of a joint report on the courts service setting out a clear analysis of present shortcomings and making suggestions as to how these should be addressed. One suggestion made - and, in our view, it is a key recommendation of the submission - is that there is a need to establish a unified courts service in this country and set it up as an Executive Agency of the Department of Justice under a Director who would be given responsibility for administration and given the resources to bring about improvements. The concept of an Executive Agency for the courts is not new. It was first mooted almost 25 years ago in the Devlin report but, like so much else in that report, the idea was shelved, not because of any inherent weakness in the suggestion itself but, rather, because of a general lack of political commitment to Civil Service reform. Meanwhile, our friends in Northern Ireland and in England and Wales have been busy reforming their court structures. In Northern Ireland, the courts service has become a unified service and is established under a Director who, working very closely with senior members of the judiciary, has improved the efficiency of the courts service to a very considerable extent. In the recent past, the Lord Chancellor of England has announced that the English courts service - which has been a unified service since 1972 - will be established as an Executive Agency under a Director. In making his announcement, the Lord Chancellor had this to say.

"The conversion of the courts service into an Agency, will not affect the judiciary, either in its independent role and functions or in its relations with the administration". The Lord Chancellor said, of course, that consultations with the judiciary on the establishment of the Agency would be carried out. At a recent conference entitled "Justice for All" staged by the Law Society of Scotland, the Past-President of the Society, Brian Adair, advocated the creation of a judicial appointments board one of the functions of which would be to review the judges' role with the objective of reducing their administrative burdens so that they would have more time to spend on their judicial functions. One contributor remarked that judges should do what they do well - judging - and leave administration to the administrators and managers under their direct supervision and guidance. Since the publication of the Society/Bar Council submission, the President of the High Court has make it clear that he would be personally opposed to the establishment of the courts in this country as an Executive Agency on the grounds that it would In our view, it is, indeed, surprising - not to mention disappointing - that anybody should see a proposal to improve the management of the courts as undermining the constitutional independence of the judiciary. It is possible, of course, that there may be some misunderstanding about what is being suggested. Responsibility for the administration of the courts in this country lies with the Minister for Justice and the day- to-day management is carried out by undermine the constitutional independence of the judiciary.

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