It is far from surprising that the majority of the Argentine population shows this Distrust of the administration of justice. What is much more striking, however, is that three quarters of those who work as lawyers in our country believe that the times of the judiciary are “slow or very slow” and that just under 4% of them judge it to be “agile or very agile”. This is no less surprising Nearly eight in 10 lawyers admit to witnessing cases of poor performance by judges, including alleged acts of corruption, although 35.5% of witnesses admit they did nothing to report them..
Similar conclusions emerge from an anonymous and voluntary survey by the Public college for lawyers porteno (CPACF) along with the Civil Association for Equality and Justice (ACIJ), in which 2,118 lawyers took part between August 21st and September 8th this year. The work was carried out on the basis of five thematic axes: trial times, quality of sentences, performance of judges, regulation of fees and communication with courts. In addition, questions were asked about satisfaction with the judicial system and the degree of independence of judges.
From the slow pace of legal proceedings in the federal judiciary investigating key officials accused of corruption scandals to the imposition of disproportionate labor court verdicts that have brought small and medium-sized companies to the brink of bankruptcy due to the dismissal of an employee, serious questions have been raised recently about the justice system.
In view of the renewed debate about the Work modernizationthat the government of Javier Milei with the stated intention of promoting job creation, we have received comments in recent days from business people interested in highlighting this The laws will be of little use if the judges are unpredictable. An example is the different criteria between labor court judges in similar cases when determining compensation. “There is an inflationary climate that is transmitted to court rulings, with criteria that are becoming absurd, to the point that interest is becoming more important than capital. The rulings are distorted, no one knows what will be decided, so costs are unpredictable,” he stressed. Aldo AlvarezPresident of the Association of Argentine Insurers (Adeaa), for whom the appeal is associated with “perverse incentives”. experimental industryalthough he stressed that “the positive thing is that for the first time we see the will to correct it.”
When rating their satisfaction with the functioning of the justice system from 0 to 10, the lawyers consulted in the above survey rated it 5 points on average while they were evaluating The level of judicial independence averages 4.6 points.
Regarding the processing times of court proceedings, 77.6% rated them negatively: 47.1% as “very slow” and 30.5% as “slow”.. Only 3.5% considered them “agile” and 0.2% considered them “very agile”. The three jurisdictions in which the highest proportion of lawyers perceive slowness are the national labor jurisdiction (89.5%), the social security jurisdiction (84.4%) and the federal civil and commercial jurisdiction (82.3%). The national commercial jurisdiction is considered the most agile with 10.2% positive opinions.
79% of lawyers surveyed said they had observed cases of poor performance by judges
As to the causes of the slowness of justice, 64.6% mentioned the lack of efficiency of judicial staff; 42.9%, internal organizational problems; 32.6%, unwillingness of judges to move cases forward; 32.2% unnecessary procedural steps and 31.4% lack of proper judges.
Regarding this last aspect, it is estimated that there are 337 vacancies in the national and federal judiciary that have not been filled, which affects the functioning of the justice system.
The average duration of casesThe process from the filing of the lawsuit to the final decision also shows weaknesses in the perception of the lawyers consulted: In 42.1%, the cases last on average between two and four years; 34.1% between five and seven years and 7.7% between eight and ten years. Only 10.3% estimate it will take between one and two years, and only 2% say “less than a year.”
Um Performance of the judges69.7% said they had a medium level of training in the problems to be solved, while 17.8% said they had a low level and only 12.5% said they had a high level.
According to the survey 79% of lawyers surveyed said they had observed cases of poor performance by judges. Of this proportion, 77.7% reported excessive delays; 38.1%, the lack of application of current regulations in the cases they solved; 37.9%, partiality or lack of independence in resolving a case. Situations of abuse of power were also mentioned (20.4%) and, to a lesser extent, private interviews and hidden actions (8.8%) and gifts (2.7%). Four out of ten respondents said they had observed these situations “very often”.
A high proportion of respondents who observed such performance deficits (35.5%) said they had done nothing. Almost half of these lawyers (48.3%) said they took this stance because they believed the measures would achieve nothing. 23.9% of them reported fear of reprisals in the same case. The third most frequently chosen reason was the lack of sufficient evidence of the crime (11.8%) and the fourth reason was the fear of being tried in front of the same judge in the future (11.6%).
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