The Course and Consequences of Justice Reform in Georgia

Judicial reform in Georgia has been in progress since the 90s. Signi ﬁ cant changes have been made within the reform since 2012, including numerous positive changes that have taken place, namely: ﬂ uence; Nevertheless, there are still signi ﬁ cant problems in the judiciary. These problems concern both the review of cases and the management of the judiciary in general. These problems include: In this paper, the author has reviewed the positive steps in detail, taken for judicial reform. The main shortcomings in the current judicial system have also been discussed in detail. In this paper, the author offers her own opinions in order to eliminate the existing problems. At the end, special attention is paid to the need of bringing the justice system and the education system closer.

• The electronic services in court have improved; • Statistics on administrative case decisions have improved; • Improved statistics on criminal case decisions; Nevertheless, there are still signifi cant problems in the judiciary. These problems concern both the review of cases and the management of the judiciary in general. These problems include: • Independence and impartiality of the judiciary; • Transparency of court hearings; • Violation of the rule of witness interrogation; • Low public confi dence in the judiciary; • Delayed cases; • Overloaded court system. In this paper, the author has reviewed the positive steps in detail, taken for judicial reform. The main shortcomings in the current judicial system have also been discussed in detail. In this paper, the author offers her own opinions in order to eliminate the existing problems. At the end, special attention is paid to the need of bringing the justice system and the education system closer.

KEYWORDS: KEYWORDS: Justice, Judge, Trust
Judicial reform in Georgia started as early as the 90s. Since then, judicial reform has gone through numerous stages. Since the beginning of the reform until today, improving the justice system has been one of the most relevant issues for the country.
It would not be an exaggeration to say that in 2012, with the change of government in Georgia, Judicial reform acquired a completely new connotation. In 2012, as well as today, the justice system was a priority for the government of that time and for society as well. Therefore, since 2012, the Judicial reform has been practically taken with a completely new approach, and many signifi cant, positive steps have been taken in this direction 1 . Namely: • Some positive legislative changes have been made to reform the High Council of Justice. In this case, the main goal was to free the Council from political infl uence and to balance the excessive power concentrated in the hands of this institution 2 ; Obviously the results turned out to be quite mixed for many people, but this was the fi rst precedent of public selection in Georgia4. Nevertheless, the issue of judicial independence remains a fundamental problem. We must remember that when we talk about the independence of the judiciary, we are talking about its independence not only from external factors, but also from internal infl uences. The High Council of Justice is one of the most problematic bodies in this regard. It was clear and expressed in a number of conclusions by international organizations that during the election of the head of the Council in 2015 the decision was made mostly according to personal preferences than the law. As a result, this clearly means that the court still has internal infl uences that call its independence into question. This is why there are still questions about the courts' impartiality, independence and possible corruption risks concerning high-profi le cases.
One of the dubious circumstances is the massive statistics on the use of conviction. More than 90% of the convictions requested by the prosecution have been unconditionally upheld by the court, which clearly raises the suspicion that the court is still under the infl uence from the prosecution bodies.
No less of a problem is the issue of communication among witnesses called to court. It is a well-known 3 Official fact that for the credibility of a witness testimony, it is important for the witnesses not to have communication with each other. Unfortunately, this is often impossible to achieve, and in practice there are many cases when people summoned to court talk to each other in the corridor or in the court yard.
The transparency of the sessions is also somewhat problematic. There are cases when the interested individuals are not allowed to attend the sessions, because the meeting rooms often don't have enough space for all of them, which cast a shadow over the transparency of the meetings. With the technical solutions we have nowadays, we think it would be appropriate for the court to provide broadcasts of public hearings in large halls, and thus solve this problem.
The conclusions of international organizations have repeatedly mentioned the bias when discussing political cases. The same conclusions indicate particular cases where offi cials attempted to pressure the court.
In addition to the above-listed ones, one of the main problems is the lack of effective judicature in the country. Within the present study, we interviewed about one hundred business operators, most of whom apparently prefer to avoid solving legal issues through the courts because they know that this process will be time-consuming and will require irrational expenses. Ultimately, such a tendency is extremely dangerous, as it will inevitably lead to the disintegration of state institutions and solving the legal problems according to the so-called "thief in law" methods.
Another substantial problem is that any judicial proceeding can take a very long time. Decisions on some cases are reached so late that the party no longer has a legal interest in getting the result. There are still such cases in my proceedings, for example, a hearing in the Court of Appeals still has not been scheduled for the appeal fi led in spring of 2019. In another case, the party has been waiting for the decision of the district court for 2 years. In order to economically develop the country, to attract investments -a safe, comfortable business environment must be created in the country, which is simply unthinkable without effi cient, timely, realistic and objective judiciary. It seems as if the whole reform is completely focused on independence of the Judiciary and we have forgotten about effectiveness of this institution, the issues of its management.
One of the reasons the Judiciary works with such delays is the system overload. Today, the judiciary is overloaded with the accumulated cases, which clearly hinders processing of the cases. A big problem is that the microfi nance organizations and various fi nancial institutions have fi led numerous appeals. For exam-ple, during the pandemic, the issue of e-registration has become even more critical as microfi nance organizations have fi led hundreds of cases electronically, which added to the pressure on the already overcrowded judiciary.
A big problem is acquiring information from the court. For example, the court hotline often does not answer incoming calls at all. In case they answer, the center will redirect you to the offi ce of the relevant judge where, to put it mildly, you should be very lucky to be answered. In the regions, district courts use electronic services less, which makes the work process much more hindered.
We need to remember that the judiciary is a service that the state offers to people and, like any service, it requires rational management. There should be a fundamental change in the system management style itself, if internal resources are not enough for this, there could be used a so-called outsource service to diagnose the problem and solve it. A number of large ministries in Georgia have already applied a similar solution.
Although virtually there is no conference, event or gathering where I, personally, haven't addressed this, unfortunately nothing changes from year to year. The system is still distanced from higher education. In fact, in my opinion, judicial reform begins not with the judiciary or the High Council of Justice, but with legal education. It is necessary for the judiciary to be closer to the university education and primarily the style of court internship should be changed. Nothing has changed in this regard over the years. The internship is very formalized, the internship of students is mainly limited to doing very technical work and is less focused on acquiring practical skills. To make an internship effective in the court, it's better to accept a relatively small number of students for the internship, but to make their practice more productive, namely: • First of all, we should defi ne the competencies, knowledge and skills that the student should acquire as the result of an internship; • We need to write down the methodology by which a student should acquire the specifi c skills; • The internship process should be established within a specifi c time frame; • There should be a system and / or method that will assess whether the student has gotten through the internship process, whether they have received the knowledge that was planned within the internship; • The internship period of the students should be counted as a working experience. For educational purposes, it is recommended to create a unifi ed electronic database of court decisions of lower courts. On the one hand this will increase public confi dence and on the other hand it will help the next generation to refer to, use, learn from the court decisions.
And fi nally, we should know that there is no issue more important than the judicial reform, on which the democracy, economic development, order and well-being of the country depends.