Changes to Judicial Services Act to Tackle Court Backlogs
The cabinet adopted at its regular session on Thursday changes to the judicial service act in a bid to tackle court backlogs, State Secretary at the Justice Ministry Robert Marolt said. The government also adopted changes to the courts act.
The changes call for more detailed criteria for assessing the judicial service and adds a new criteria - work done - in removing and preventing court backlogs.
It also allows retired judges, until they reach 70 years of age, to take part in tackling court backlogs, Marolt added.
They also institute an inter-district judge with the aim of securing a greater mobility of judges within the area of jurisdiction of a single higher court.
According to Marolt, the changes are necessary for the implementation of the Lukenda project of eliminating court backlogs by 2010.
Amendments to the courts act meanwhile supplements the efficiency records of judges and courts by listing the number of solved and pending cases that are considered as court backlogs.
The changes also institute "movable court cases" which would allow for courts of the same instance to share cases among themselves.
This would enable the president of a superior court to transfer cases from a court with backlogs to a less burdened court in his area of jurisdiction, pending that the backlogged court submits a proposal to that effect.
The changes to the courts act also allow forensics from the EU to be appointed by the court and not only Slovenian forensics.
Slovenia has been facing problems with court backlogs for some years now. Recently, the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg passed several verdicts against Slovenia because of the problem, awarding compensation to victims of drawn-out court proceedings.
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