Strategic advice on strengthening judicial institutions.
I give senior counsel to courts, governments and donors working to strengthen the judiciary and the rule of law. In very different countries the same questions come up: whether people trust their courts, whether judges are independent and accountable, whether justice is open and within reach, and whether it arrives in good time. These are the questions I help partners work through.
Courts the public can trust
The credibility and responsiveness judicial authority rests on: how courts earn public confidence, and how reform rebuilds it where it has been lost.
Independent and accountable judges
The balance at the centre of every credible judiciary: protecting judicial independence while supporting genuine accountability, judicial ethics and institutional integrity.
Courts that open their doors
Demystifying the courts through judicial communications, public outreach and the open court principle, so that justice is visible and understood, and people are not intimidated by the institutions meant to serve them.
Justice within reach
Access to justice in practical, financial and procedural terms, including case and caseflow management and the timeliness access depends on.
Helping people understand their rights
Public legal education and information that equips people to understand the law, their rights and how the courts work, so that justice is not the preserve of specialists.
Judiciaries learning from judiciaries
International judicial cooperation: peer exchanges and institutional partnerships through which courts and judicial councils strengthen one another, on their own terms.
I can come in at any stage.
An engagement can begin at early scoping and the shaping of a concept, or later, as a second view on work already under way. What I bring is the same throughout: judgement on direction, and a clear sense of what will hold and what will not.
Let's work together
Most engagements begin with a conversation about what an institution is trying to achieve. I am always glad to have that conversation.
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