CJ shuffles judges in judiciary overhaul
Blame for the failures of Kenya’s justice system has, for a long time, landed on the the Judiciary.
However, reforms have begun to take place, gradually dissolving away the heavy load of incompetence, corruption and slow pace that had come to burden Kenya’s Judiciary. (Read: Kenya's new judges sworn in)
The new Chief Justice, Dr Willy Mutunga, has come to be the symbol of those reforms. Dr Mutunga, and his deputy Ms Nancy Baraza, were appointed through thorough public vetting.
That process closed the chapter of appointments that were being done by the President without any public involvement.
Brought about by the new Constitution, the thorough public vetting of candidates for judicial positions was again employed in the recruitment of judges of the first Supreme Court and the new 28 High Court judges.
Despite these improvements in the recruitment of new judicial officials, the challenge now is the planned vetting of judges, according to senior counsel Paul Muite.
“Justice Wood, the Chief Justice from Ghana nominated by the President and the Prime Minister to the vetting board must vacate,” he says. According to Mr Muite, the judge has “very many ethical questions and was a wrong choice”.
“If we get the vetting wrong, it will be a major setback,” he added.
Mr Kibe Mungai, a lawyer based in Nairobi, says that the vetting should be completed quickly and in a fair way “so that the issue of insecurity among judges can come to an end.”
According to the lawyer, a part from the newly-recruited judges, the rest of the judicial officers will not be able to work well as a result of anxiety.
Besides vetting, reforms have also been directed inside courts.
Dr Mutunga has set out to make the courts appear friendly, by abolishing wigs and robes that were previously the traditional attire for judges.
The new CJ replaced Mr Justice (Rtd) Evan Gicheru, whose reign has been praised for the adoption of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) by the Judiciary.
Under Mr Gicheru’s watch, the Judiciary started to employ technology in case management, while court records begun to be converted into digital formats for them to be easily available online.
Through the Kenya Law Reform Commission and the National Council for Law Reporting, the Judiciary has been able make steps towards modernising the justice process.
All the laws of Kenya can be accessed by anybody through the Internet. A data base of the laws is available on the law reform commission website.
The website — www.kenyalaw.org — also contains other important information including the daily cause lists for all the courts, profiles of judicial officers including a list of judges and advocates.
According to information posted on the Judiciary website, seven million pages worth of court records have been scanned.
A contractor was hired, with the help of Kenya ICT board, to instal a document management system to allow users access to the scanned court records, according to the website.
Past issues of the Kenya Gazette, from the colonial times, have also been digitised and posted online.
The use of ICT is welcome and can enable faster conclusion of cases, but it is the quality of judgements that will matter in the end, according to Mr Mungai.
Early this year, a new court complex was opened in Nairobi’s Upper Hill area.
The building houses all the Divisions of the High Court in Nairobi.
