Court performance around the world: A comparative perspective

Increasing importance has been placed on an effective and efficient judiciary by both governments as well as civil society. However, apart from decisions that they render, there is little known about the trends in court performance. The judicial reform experiences so far have made it clear that more information is needed to review and compare trends among different countries. This paper addresses the efficiency aspect of court performance recognizing that quality is left for later research. Efficiency was chosen because it can be quantitatively measured using objective data. In addition, congestion, cost and delay re some of the problem most often complained about by the public in many countries. This paper reviews the data collected from eleven countries on three continents and provides a description of performance. The man areas of comparison include the number of cases filed, resolved, and pending per judge, the clearance and congestion rates, time to resolve a case, the number of judges, and the cost of a case. The paper also reviews the recent trends within each country and discusses some possible reforms. Although this is a first step in establishing baseline data, further work is needed to make data more accessible to the public to improve public awareness, encourage public debate, and promote civil society participation in the judicial reform process.