Selecting Court Presidents in Slovakia, 2011ꟷ2017

During the communist regime, court presidents in Central and Eastern European countries played an instrumental role in the administration of justice systems. They were considerably empowered vis-a-vis rank-and-file judges at their respective courts, while serving as an intermediary between the political branches and the judiciary. After 30 years since the breakdown of communism in Slovakia, selection of court presidents remains to be the only major power kept by the political branches with regard to professional careers of judges, despite a general trend of empowering the judiciary in administration of its matters. However, nowadays even this power is somewhat restricted. Until 2011 ministers of justice could simply appoint (and often dismiss) a judge to (and from) the position of the court president. Since 2011, they can only do so on the basis of open, competitive and transparent selection procedure, which is conducted by a five-members selecting committee consisting predominantly of the nominees of the ministry, but including members of the judiciary as well. The paper explores how competitive these selection procedures were, as well as the factors influencing candidates‘ chances to be selected for the position of a court president using the logistic regression, with special attention paid to the social capital of individual candidates within the system. In addition, findings of the logistic regression are supplemented by a qualitative analysis of 25 interviews with judges, politicians, and lawyers addressing the powers of court presidents as well as the presence and importance of informal practices in their selection. Paper is part of a larger project focusing on judicial careers in Slovakia.