Together for the Open Judiciary

In spite of the changes recently introduced in judiciary, the public credibility remains low, division of judges persists and many problems remain unsolved. Submitted project reacts on this situation in regard of the need to increase the openness of judges themselves towards the pubic. There are several judges’ organizations operating in Slovakia, but none of them is visible for public. They do not communicate with media; do not perform any activities, which would help public understand the situation in the judiciary. ZOJ – For Open Judiciary is the only judges’ organization commenting the societal events, organizing the conferences open to expert public and ad hoc public events and participating on events organized by the CSOs. In the pre-election period ZOJ sees the importance to open the dialogue with relevant political parties. At the same time, ZOJ considers the open discussions with students, potential future colleagues, as the crucial part of its mission to fulfill the aim of increased judicial openness. Submitted project reacts on described situation with two kinds of activities: (i) communication with political parties to open the space for information flow and searching the acceptable solutions on actual and ongoing judicial problems; and (ii) open the tradition of discussions with law faculties’ students to give them the chance to discuss directly with judges and show them the importance of open communication, especially if one day they may serve as judges themselves.

web : www.sudcovia.sk

contact : zoj@sudcovia.sk