Developing a judicial selection toolkit: update on a collaborative project to strengthen the rule of law

Jan van Zyl Smit

Bingham Centre for the Rule of Law, London

j.vanzylsmit@binghamcentre.biicl.org

Last autumn, readers of the Rule of Law Forum newsletter were introduced to the judicial selection toolkit project. It is a collaboration between the Bingham Centre for the Rule of Law, an independent research centre based in London, and several IBA bodies: the Rule of Law Forum, the Judges’ Forum, the Bar Issues Commission, the Forum for Barristers and Advocates, the Litigation Committee, the Legal Policy & Research Unit (LPRU) and the Human Rights Institute (IBAHRI).

This collaboration, involving an unusually large number of stakeholders, demonstrates that judicial selection issues are a matter of serious concern across many parts of the IBA. 

Refining the questionnaire

Those shared concerns were evident when I spoke with Bar leaders at the 2025 Mid-Year Meetings in Milan, to test and refine our project’s research questionnaire. The questionnaire was broadened so that it ranges from the early stages of fostering interest in judicial careers among law students and practising lawyers, to the promotion of serving judges and the process for appointments to the highest courts.

Issues of diversity were foregrounded, including the need to address conscious and unconscious bias. Similarly, the questionnaire drew attention to the need to manage conflicts of interest during selection, and for processes to be appropriately accountable to candidates and the public.

Once finalised, the questionnaire was promoted by the participating IBA bodies to their membership. To encourage responses, the project team followed up with questions to national bar associations in jurisdictions that we had specifically researched due to their recent judicial selection changes or ongoing debates about reform. 

The responses

By spring of this year, a rich set of qualitative responses had been received on the state of judicial appointments in an array of jurisdictions across five continents. Remarkably, many of the issues are similar: from a lack of clarity in regard to the selection criteria to inconsistent questioning of candidates in interviews (in jurisdictions where those take place) and, most troublingly, government interference.

Our body of written responses was supplemented by interviews, facilitated by the IBAHRI, with judges in jurisdictions where selection processes have come under acute pressure recently.

The path ahead

 We anticipate bringing the full findings from our project and the toolkit proposals to the IBA Annual Conference in Copenhagen this October. 

As a forerunner of this, the project organised a session at the November 2025 IBA Annual Conference in Toronto, highlighting judicial selection issues in particular jurisdictions.

Two speakers combined past experience of leading their national bar associations who then accepted subsequent judicial positions (and officer roles in the IBA Judges Forum): High Court President David Barniville of Ireland described the new Judicial Appointments Commission, which replaced an earlier advisory body and now interviews candidates; and retired Supreme Court Justice Nene Amegatcher of Ghana discussed a series of constitutional disputes, including over an executive veto on candidates selected by the Judicial Council, which the Supreme Court has upheld.

Our third panellist was NYU Law School Professor, Amrit Singh, who discussed her work with practising lawyers in Mexico to assess the radical impact of reforms that have replaced appointed judges with a new system of direct popular election.

Amrit highlighted how this has given the government substantial influence over the pre-selection of candidates, as well as leaving the process vulnerable to organised crime.

The panel provided a sobering perspective on the difficulties of designing an effective judicial appointment process that does not undermine the rule of law but rather strengthens it, which is the challenge that the judicial selection toolkit project aims to address.