Judge John Tunheim Interview

UNMIK Radio/TV

Hello and welcome, from the studios of UN Radio in Kosovo…

In 2002, former SRSG Michael Steiner requested that local legal institutions identify where reforms and restructuring of Kosovo’s judicial system should be made. In the last two years, the United States’ Department of Justice and the Council of Europe joined with the Kosovo Judicial and Prosecutorial Council to produce an expert report on where these changes could be made. These changes were revealed formally at a conference in February.

One of the key legal experts who helped in drafting the proposed judicial changes was US Judge John Tunheim, the first US judge sent to Kosovo in 2000.

UN Radio in Kosovo features this exclusive interview with Judge Tunheim.

Begin:

Judge Tunheim, with this new report what were the main findings and how did the legal experts propose to solve these problems

“We looked at a lot of different issues and we felt that looking at the structure of the system is that it is just too complicated. So we are recommending a much simpler system in which the municipal courts would be the first level courts throughout Kosovo and the district courts would be the appellate courts and then the supreme court would have discretionary jurisdiction to hear the most important cases. It is very much a simplification of the current system to make it more understandable to the people and make it more effective in getting the work done. There is a big backlog in the courts and part of the problem is that these old procedures that have been in use for so many years aren’t very useful anymore for the modern era.”

You spoke of a backlog of cases – cases in which people are waiting just to have their day in court. How can such a backlog be addressed so that justice can be served in a timely manner?

“Obviously there are some more judges that are needed in some of the areas to finish up the backlog. Part of our work was to devise a system that could accurately measure the workload of the courts. We measure the cases by the amount of time it takes to finish a case, not by the number of cases that are filed. And that way you can compare district to district and there are some districts that are going to be over-staffed, that have too many judges, they don’t need all the judges that they have, those judges can be moved to areas where there is a big backlog to clean that up and get ahead of the problem.”

Judge Tunheim – based on your findings, how can professional standards be maintained if the judges are paid so poorly in Kosovo?

“We did make the recommendation in the report that judicial standards, salary standards be the same as other salaries government-wide, so that the salary of the Supreme Court President should be the same as the salary of the members of the assembly for example. That needs to be changed. As far as raising the salaries to levels within the region, that really is an issue for UNMIK and eventually for the assembly to address. But the important point for us is to make sure that judges are paid a salary that allow them to be independent and to be the fair and impartial arbiter of disputes.”

Because the issue of judicial reform is so complicated – can you leave us with a simple explanation of the main recommendations of the panel?

“Everything is here. They have good judges who want to work, they need to be reorganized in a way that makes it much simpler to the public, much more understandable to the public and they need to be governed by themselves. Judges need to govern themselves. Obviously the Assembly will decide eventually on what the budget is going to be for the judiciary, the executive branch will get involved as well, but a judicial branch should not be controlled by other branches of government . That is our main point that a judicial council can be created out of the judicial and prosecutorial council right now. It can be independent, it can control and manage the judiciary and really create the kind of independent judicial system that will benefit every Kosovan citizen.”

Back announce;

That was US Judge John Tunheim, one of the main architects helping to reform Kosovo’s judicial system in what one legal expert has said will be a 3 to 5 year process.

And with this we conclude today’s edition. Stay tuned as UN Radio in Kosovo continues to bring you exclusive interviews with key political and cultural figures that are shaping Kosovo’s future. Thanks for listening.