The choice of leadership of the Justice is dynamically returning to the centre of the political and institutional agenda in view of the constitutional review, which has been announced.

Following the Prime Minister’s public statements, as well as the interventions of the major and minor opposition, Article 90 of the Constitution is once again under scrutiny, raising critical questions about the democratic legitimacy, independence, and institutional balance of the judiciary.

In this context, the School of Law of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens organized an event on “The Choice of Justice Leadership”, bringing the student scientific community into a fruitful and meaningful dialogue with leading representatives of the judicial and academic life of the country.

The event was held with the support and assistance of the UCA and the professors of the Law School, confirming the active role of the University in the public institutional dialogue.

Michael Pikramenos, President of the Council of State, before expressing his position on the selection of the leadership of the Judiciary, stands on the importance of the European acquis for Greece. As he notes, “the European acquis is a bright path for our country“.

Despite the crisis affecting Europe, he believes that “we lawyers can draw ideas and principles to move forward,” especially at a time when Greece is facing a “crisis of institutions.”

Regarding the debate on the selection of presidents by the executive, Mr. Pikramenos stresses that it has been initiated due to a “lack of public trust”.

He explains that the judiciary is a “state function that uses a technical language that the average person, not even the educated, does not understand” as it relates to the language of judicial decisions.

He adds that, in today’s liberal democracy, “where there are no longer any institutional counterweights to the parliamentary majority”, the judiciary, and in particular the SCE, is “the only institutional counterweight that can cancel public policies of the parliamentary power of the day”.

Pikramenos stresses that the decision of the Justice is divided into two parts: the operative part and the rationale. “Although the Judiciary is the only institutional counterbalance, it often enters the political game and the rationale of the decisions is ignored, which is overlooked even by university professors,” he notes.

Referring to polls related to public trust in institutions, Pikranos notes that “it is not complete”, explaining that in the judicial process there are winners and losers, while “political games are played“.

He wonders “how the image of the judiciary is formed by citizens to shape their view of distrust of it.”

The autonomy of the judiciary is wrong

In reference to the choice of the leadership of the Judiciary, Pikramenos said that “the autonomy of the Judiciary is wrong“, stressing that “it is wrong for judges to choose their own presidents”.

“There is a serious risk that this autonomy will create a pole of power that will be opposed to Parliament,” he adds, explaining that this would be a problem for democracy because “judges also exercise power. They are not saints, nobody is a saint”.

As for the proposal to create an electoral body to select the judicial leadership, Pikramenos rejects it, calling the idea “wrong”.

“The issue is not who will be involved, but who will be the ones to choose the judicial leadership,” he says, adding that if this responsibility is assigned to a body, “we may be led to opaque transactions.”

He also rejects the suggestion that the President should be in charge of selecting the leadership, saying that “we would politicise the judiciary”, as “the politicisation of the role of the President is already happening, despite the limited powers he has”.

Pikramenos concludes that the current system, as the CoE has ruled, is “linked to popular sovereignty” and is the one that ensures the democratic legitimacy and independence of the judiciary.

On the other hand, Spyros Vlahopoulos, a professor of Constitutional Law at the Athens Law School, says that the debate on the selection of the leadership of the judiciary must be approached with “institutional equanimity and regardless of the persons selected”.

He believes that the current system must be changed “radically and immediately”. “Does, for example, the Minister of Merchant Shipping know the judges of the CoE or the SC, so that he can choose the most suitable ones for the leadership?” he asks, stressing that it is “a matter of substance to determine which is the appropriate institution that knows things better and therefore can lead to a better decision”.

Vlahopoulos notes that “the Minister of Justice, indeed, presumably knows best from the subject matter”, while the other members of the cabinet “are not in a position to have such knowledge”.

It says that “it is no coincidence that all but a few cabinet decisions are unanimous, because the majority of cabinet members have no opinion on the matter.”

He added that the process is “opaque, as there is secrecy of the cabinet minutes” and that “at a high point for the judiciary and the functioning of the constitution, we choose an opaque process.”

He also stresses that “there is no evaluation of the Supreme Court judges”. As he says, “the Justices of Appeal and State Counsellors are not evaluated”, and this is a serious problem.

“Everyone should be judged, especially the Supreme Court justices who have the final say,” he adds, noting the need for “an effective evaluation system.”

Regarding the crisis of public trust in institutions, Vlahopoulos stresses that the existing system “reinforces the image of dependence in the eyes of public opinion on the executive”.

He notes that the current system does not enhance public confidence in the judiciary and concludes that “the answer is no” when asked whether the existing system enhances confidence. He objects to the frequent defence of the existing system by invoking popular sovereignty.

“The principle of popular sovereignty is one pillar of the constitutional system, the other is the rule of law,” he says, adding that “there should be no democratic legitimacy in this way.” The professor points out that democratic legitimacy “is ensured through the issuance of the presidential decree”.

He criticises the unchecked functioning of the prime ministerial system and argues that the model we have further reinforces this tendency. “A serious debate on institutional counterweights in the country must be opened,” he says.

Vlahopoulos believes that any change in the way the leadership of the judiciary is selected should be along two axes. “The first is to strengthen the role of judges,” explaining that although it is said that “if we give powers to judges, a guild and voting climate within the judiciary will be strengthened,” he is not convinced, as in the current system, “except for the selection of the leadership of the judiciary, the three-member councils that run the courts are elected by the judges themselves.”

Therefore, he argues that “the judges can and are capable of selecting the three-member boards, but do they not know who is qualified to select the leadership of the judiciary?”

In addition, Vlahopoulos believes that lawyers, as “receivers of the service of the judiciary,” should be involved in the evaluation for the selection of leadership.

“We need an electoral body, consisting of a majority of judges, supplemented by representatives of lawyers, university professors, and the presidents of the constitutionally guaranteed independent administrative authorities.”

This electoral body, he says, “will operate at an advisory level and in a second year the President of the Republic will decide, so that we do not have a President of the Republic who simply confirms what is constantly said about him, that he is in the status of a political notary.”

Eugenia Prevedourou, professor of Administrative Law at the Law School of Thessaloniki, points out that judicial officials in Greece “enjoy constitutional guarantees of personal independence, which are not at all inferior to those provided at the European level”.

He adds that in Greece “we have a career of judicial officials who are judged exclusively by decisions of their colleagues, without any involvement of the executive”. The professor explains that the judiciary is self-governing “at the level of the country’s major courts of first instance and courts of appeal, where the judges themselves select the three-member administrative councils”.

As he points out, only three powers remain in the executive branch: “the power of the Minister of Justice to appeal against the decisions of the Supreme Judicial Councils, the power to initiate disciplinary proceedings and appeal against the decisions of the disciplinary councils, and the power to select the presidents of the Supreme Courts.”

However, it stresses that the pursuit of a fully independent judiciary “is only one side of the coin”. He refers to the German constitution, which provides for the appointment not only of the presiding judges but also of all members of the highest federal courts “by the cooperation of the executive and parliament”.

She also says that “the French Council of State is characterised by a close embrace with the executive in many aspects of public life”, and notes that “professors or lawyers can be appointed members of the Council of State, and supreme judges are often directors of ministers’ political offices, which helps them to know the administration better and influence it more effectively”.

But, as he points out, “no one can question the effectiveness and independence of the French Council of State.”

She acknowledges that the administration of justice is not only judged by “the 4 or 5 major and politically sensitive cases that are of public concern”. Rather, she explains, “it is the citizen’s daily contact with the judicial mechanism that consolidates the conviction that the law is consistently applied in Greece.”

At the same time, it acknowledges that “the long delays in issuing decisions and the sometimes observed poor legal quality of judicial decisions delegitimize the judiciary and severely affect the rule of law“. Many citizens, he notes, “feel frustrated in their expectations regarding the application of the law in Greece”.

For this reason, he stresses that “tthe judiciary needs persons, beyond their apparent independence, with great administrative skills and abilities, who will guide the judiciary in the effective fulfillment of its mission“.

In terms of the efficiency and quality of the Judiciary, Prevedourou notes that it entails “charging cases at a rapid pace, putting constant pressure and possibly disciplinary action on those judges who are acting unstable in their work and are finding it difficult to cope adequately with their official duties”.

He worries, however, about whether “we will have persons willing and able to take on this unpleasant burden at the head of the judiciary, if those who are appreciated by their colleagues and enjoy popularity emerge in an electoral process”.

“It is not institutionally optimal to have a closed judicial system, with public scrutiny limited only to the exercise of scientific criticism,” he explains. She finally stands by the legislature’s latest corrective moves, which “have substantially limited the power of the judiciary’s leadership and the pool of persons from which the cabinet selects.”

As he explains, “with the opinion of the judges, the cabinet is locked in, which develops a de facto binding force, because colleagues know the ethics and quality of the proposed persons”.

He adds that “when the vote in the high courts reveals a broad majority in favour of a particular person, it will be extremely difficult, if not politically impossible, to deviate, since the selection of another person would be interpreted as a political interference in the independence of the judiciary and the person proposed would lack the legitimacy conferred by the confidence of the majority of colleagues.”

The choice of the leadership of the judiciary is not just a matter for legal circles, but for society as a whole

A key element of the event was the presentation of the Student Academic Group of Public and International Law, presented by Andreas Karagiannis, Director of the Group. As it was stressed, the choice of the leadership of the Judiciary does not only concern legal circles, but the whole society, as the event also included the presentation of the detailed submission of the FEDDNA, the result of the work of the think tank Constitutional Law.

As it was emphasized, “the choice of the leadership of the Judiciary does not only concern legal circles, but the whole society, as it directly affects the trust of citizens and the legitimacy of the rule of law“.

The presentation presented in detail the current status of Article 90, the case law of the CoE and theoretical approaches, pointing out the complexity and ambiguity of the procedure, as well as the lack of clear binding nature of the opinions. It was stressed that “the revised provision should be clearer and more precise“.

As a proposal, the Group suggested the establishment of an Independent Judicial Leadership Selection Council, with a mixed composition of senior judges, retired judges, academics, representatives of lawyers and Parliament, which would evaluate candidates based on objective and measurable criteria and recommend three candidates to the President of the Republic for final selection.

As noted, such a system “promotes depoliticisation, transparency, accountability and genuine independence of the judiciary, while enhancing the trust of citizens“.

Finally, this event highlighted its particular institutional importance, as for the first time in history, the student community, through scientifically substantiated and collectively elaborated positions, entered substantially into the public debate and interacted equally with the academic and judicial community.

This initiative, which was carried out with the support and assistance of the University and the faculty of the School, marks the dynamic presence of the student world as a whole in the critical socio-political and institutional issues of the country, confirming that the new generation of lawyers does not passively follow developments but actively, responsibly, and informedly participates in their formation.