FROM THE very first time that the Greeks held the Olympic Games, those who dreamt of taking part in these events have had to prepare themselves early in life. Their education, training, lifestyles and even personal growth, have had to be particularly tailored.
In contrast, the same rigorous training is not considered as essential for those who wish to hold positions in the judiciary.
Currently, all that would-be judges need is to get their law degrees from officially recognized law schools, pass the bar examinations given every year by the Supreme Court, engage in the practice of law for a fixed number of years (15 for those wanting to be in the Supreme Court), and, violŕ, they are qualified to be appointed members of the Philippine judiciary. With just the icing of nomination by the Judicial and Bar Council, they may under our Constitution be chosen by the President to sit on the bench. Recently, prospective candidates must take a short course at the Judicial Academy and pass an examination thereafter.
No intensive training in the special activity of judgeship is required. What is necessary only, to increase the chances of being noticed by the appointing power, is for the aspirant to stand out in private practice or in the government service and, by some other method come within radar range of presidential attention.
That method of identifying from the ranks of experienced lawyers, who would be appointed to the judiciary we copied from the United States. It is known as selection by recognition and it is the system followed in common law countries. The system is practical and economical, and in fairness sufficed for our needs.
Developments in our country, however, have raised some doubts on the reliability of selection founded on the basis of recognition. Consensus is now forming, here and abroad, that the current role and significance of the judiciary, require a more deliberate intervention with the law of natural selection. It is now being suggested that prospective judges, before taking up their posts, should be made to undergo a more structured schooling for a number of years and focused formation in order to equip them with the necessary tools to properly do their job. Training for the judiciary, in these times of specialization and globalization, is now more and more being demanded as very essential for maintaining a good and independent judiciary.
?Training,? writes the Consultative Council of European Judges in 2006 to the attention of the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe, ?is a prerequisite if the judiciary is to be respected and worthy of respect. The trust citizens place in the judicial system will be strengthened if judges have a depth and diversity of knowledge which extend beyond the technical field of law to areas of important social concern, as well as courtroom and personal skills and understanding enabling them to manage cases and deal with all persons involved appropriately and sensitively. Training is in short essential for the objective, impartial and competent performance of judicial functions, and to protect judges from inappropriate influences.?
In our country, the Philippine Judicial Academy has the monopoly on judicial training. Similar institutions exist in the rest of the world. India maintains the largest judicial training academy in the world. The Judge?s Institute of Sri Lanka was established in 1985, the Federal Judicial Academy of Pakistan was set up in 1988, the Judicial Administration Training Institute was put up by Bangladesh in 1995, and the National Judicial Academy of Nepal was founded in 2004.
We do not have the space to examine the content of the training that each of these institutions give to prospective members of their respective judiciaries, but it may be a good idea to inquire into these academies? efforts to push back the start of judicial training a bit earlier than that traditionally conducted under the present system. My gut feel is that these institutions are veering toward continental Europe?s framework of judicial selection known as the careerist approach.
Under the careerist system, judges are appointed from the ranks of law graduates for the term of their careers. Because this approach to judicial selection requires an entire system that is structured and comprehensive, it is necessarily expensive and liable to be rigid. It requires a new system of graduate and post-graduate courses, of stage-to-stage evaluation and assessment academically as well as practically, all oriented toward the teaching of the daily task of judges, and most importantly, it provides the time and opportunity to imbue them with the elements of principled behavior.
These courses generally incorporate not merely techniques in the purely legal fields but also in ethics, in management of men and materials, in administration of people and process in information technology, in social sciences and, by way of clearing the court channels, in alternative dispute resolution.
For us to uproot the system of selection by recognition to replace it completely and overnight with the careerist system may be out of the question. But our country and people have been blessed with the talent of being able to combine elements from diverse cultures and different places. A country that is famous for fusion cuisine should have no difficulty putting together what is good in both systems.
Ricardo J. Romulo is a senior partner of Romulo Mabanta Buenaventura Sayoc & De Los Angeles.
