Restructuring the Courts: In Search of Basic Principles for the Judiciary

David Pimentel, Florida Coastal School of Law

Abstract

Judicial reform is afoot throughout at the world at present, but few judicial reform projects are ambitious enough to include a complete restructuring of a court system – redefining the number, size, and location of courts, as well as their territorial and subject-matter jurisdiction. The comprehensive court restructuring initiative in post-war Bosnia and Herzegovina, therefore, had little precedent to follow. This article summarizes the principles that governed that project and attaches the previously unpublished Report of the court restructuring team, for the benefit of future efforts along similar lines.

The principles established and lessons learned in the Bosnian court restructuring may be applicable in a wide variety of court reform contexts, foreign and domestic, whether in terms of the substantive criteria used to justify a court’s existence or closure, or in terms of the approach taken to accommodate political sensitivities. And with the publication of this Report, it should never again be necessary – on questions of the number, size and location of courts, system-wide – to work from a blank slate.