The Accountability of Judges in Post Communist States: From Bureaucratic to Professional Accountability

Abstract

Both the impartiality and the discretion of judges in the bulk of postcommunist states are limited by the system of bureaucratic accountability inherited from the Soviet era and left largely intact to this day. Bureaucratic accountability refers to the accountability of judges to their superiors in the judicial hierarchy (both court presidents and judges on higher courts) and is manifested in both the power of court presidents and the evaluation of judges.

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The author would like to thank Harold Epineuse, Zoltan Fleck, Marina Kurkchiyan, Daniela Piana, Anja Seibert-Fohr, Timo Ligi, Vadim Volkov, and participants in the conference Pravo i Pravoprimenenie (Law and Law Enforcement), St. Petersburg, April 2010, for comments on an earlier draft, and Sarah Flemig, Jessica Gingrich-Lawton, Elena Maltseva, and Alexei Trochev for research assistance.