Introduction

First Stage: Constitutional Reforms

Second Stage: Increasing the Efficiency of Justice

Third stage: Overall Planning
a) The Administration of Justice Must be Perceived as a Public Service
b) Judicial Reforms Must be Implemented in an Integrated Plan
c) Judicial Reforms Must Be Based on Consensus

Second Stage: Increasing the Efficiency of Justice
However, it was soon evident that additional reforms were required in order to guarantee not only the independence of judges and due process for the parties, but also to ensure greater efficiency on the part of the courts, as well as the overall capacity of the administration of justice to satisfy the increasing social demands prompted by Spain’s economic development. In that regard, from the ratification of the Constitution and continually during the last decades, there has been a spectacular increase in the number of cases brought before the Spanish courts, putting a heavy pressure on the justice system. The figure has risen from 2,500,000 annual cases in the early 1980s to nearly seven million cases lodged during the year 2000. Obviously, this increase has not taken place equally in all jurisdictions, but rather is most apparent in the criminal and administrative jurisdictions. At the same time, the media have given added attention to judicial problems, and criticism in the mass media and in academic and political circles has increased concerning the lack of coherence and delay in rendering judicial decisions, which have become some of the most frequent topics of debate in this present constitutional system. Frequent opinion polls taken by the General Council of the Judiciary and other institutions indicate that citizens are generally satisfied with the professional and ethical level of judges, but that they disapprove of the delay in issuing decisions and what is perceived unpredictability of the content of the courts’ judgments.

The perception of these deficiencies has given rise to a series of separate reforms implemented with a view to increasing the efficiency of the courts, and which to date have been aimed at resolving specific, urgent problems. The reforms were carried out by different governments and ministerial staffs, as well as successive Councils of the Judiciary, and are very different in nature. A few examples include the 1988 Law on Judicial Personnel which considerably increased the number of judges in Spain, the 1994 reform of the organization of the Judges Training School, or a series of laws passed in the last few years to expedite administrative proceedings (1998), amend civil procedure (2000), and reform juvenile criminal proceedings (2001). In addition to these legislative measures, the Government and the General Council of the Judiciary have developed administrative programs to increase the efficiency and quality of court operations. The Government, for example, has established integrated administrative offices (servicios comunes) which perform administrative tasks servicing several courts, and has computerized the entire administration of justice system. In turn, the General Council of the Judiciary has increased its efforts to integrate new judges into the system and implemented programs to gather more reliable judicial statistics, provide specialized training to judges and to evaluate their productivity.

The numerous reforms already implemented or still in progress have required notable investments in time and human and economic resources. But as indicated above, these have been separate, unrelated reforms lacking an overall design.