Administration of Justice and Courts’ Budget: An Independence and a Managerial Issue

How, and how much, justice systems and courts gain from the State budget, and in which way they are accountable for what they spend, is of paramount importance for judicial independence and for the competent functioning of courts. Since the New Public Management wave started, budget has played a major role as a powerful managerial tool to improve planning, policies’ development, services delivered, and accountability mechanisms. However, generally speaking, European justice systems have been unresponsive to the application of managerial techniques, and this is particularly true for budget planning and expenditures. Courts’ budgets have been, and still are in many cases, drafted only based on historical costs, and although so important for the court functioning, they have been one of the most neglected subjects in court administration studies. In recent years, some countries have been developing new approaches to justice systems and court budgeting, using a “performance-based” budget perspective, which relates organizational costs and organizational outputs, policies development and resource allocation, performance targets and resource appropriation, managerial discretion and accountability. This paper addresses the topic of justice system and courts’ budget, focusing on three cases studies (Finland, France, and the Netherlands). After a brief overview of the literature available on the topic, the paper will present three case studies particularly interesting in the European landscape, because of their innovative approaches about court budgeting, within different judicial system governance settings. The three case studies will be compared in terms of assessing budget needs,budget appropriation processes, and criteria used for budget allocation to courts. The concluding remarks will focus on the peculiarities of these three case studies, and then will consider to what extent a performance-based budget can enhance both the independence and the quality of justice.