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EN-US" lang="EN-US">Unlike former times, where magistrates (judges and prosecutors) were politically
nominated, nowadays in Belgium the only way for judicial admission is to pass
the judiciary entrance examination organized by the High Council of Justice. The
selection of magistrates hasclearly undergone an evolution, and efforts to
optimize the selection methods are being pursued until today. Whether these
efforts actually result in an improvement of the selection methods, has never
been independently or systematically evaluated, which implies that there is no grounded
information whether these are related to an improved quality of magistrates in
practice. In this research, the selection will be evaluated in terms of
reliability and validity across different clusters of selection methods applied
during four periods of time in Belgium (before 1991, 1991-2000, 2000-2010 and
since 2010). In order to evaluate these diagnostic quality demands, there will
be made use of legislation and legal doctrine, socio-scientific literature,
interviews, secondary data-analysis and new collected data with regard to job
performance of magistrates. Finally, to verify whether there are indications of
differences in the quality of selection methods of magistrates in Europe, the
Belgian methods will be compared with those in the Netherlands and France.
Project
An evaluation of the selection of magistrates (judges and prosecutors) in Belgium
EN-US" lang="EN-US">Unlike former times, where magistrates (judges and prosecutors) were politically
nominated, nowadays in Belgium the only way for judicial admission is to pass
the judiciary entrance examination organized by the High Council of Justice. The
selection of magistrates hasclearly undergone an evolution, and efforts to
optimize the selection methods are being pursued until today. Whether these
efforts actually result in an improvement of the selection methods, has never
been independently or systematically evaluated, which implies that there is no grounded
information whether these are related to an improved quality of magistrates in
practice. In this research, the selection will be evaluated in terms of
reliability and validity across different clusters of selection methods applied
during four periods of time in Belgium (before 1991, 1991-2000, 2000-2010 and
since 2010). In order to evaluate these diagnostic quality demands, there will
be made use of legislation and legal doctrine, socio-scientific literature,
interviews, secondary data-analysis and new collected data with regard to job
performance of magistrates. Finally, to verify whether there are indications of
differences in the quality of selection methods of magistrates in Europe, the
Belgian methods will be compared with those in the Netherlands and France.
Date:1 Sep 2013 → 20 Oct 2015
Keywords:magistraten
Disciplines:Law, Criminology
Project type:PhD project