Jennifer Carroll MacNeill (Dún Laoghaire, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Okay. I want to go back to Mr. Herrick on some of that. Those UN principles date from 1985 and 1999, but what Mr. Herrick does not include is a much more significant document, which is the Mount Scopus International Standards of Judicial Independence. All the leading political scientists and legal theorists came together to draw up those standards, which specifically acknowledge the role of governments in circumstances where there are judicial selection boards. I can send that to Mr. Herrick. It is so important. For example, the standards state: "The recent trend of establishing judicial selection boards or commissions ... should be viewed favourably [of course we have that], provided that a proper balance is maintained in the composition of such boards [by] branches of [the] government".

The UN standards, and all the others to which Mr. Herrick referred, particularly those of the Council of Europe, which deals with so many European career judge systems, are entirely different from, and not comparable with, the common law model. The frame of reference is very different, especially when one looks at the judicial selection systems in Latin America and Russia, all of which are covered by UN standards. These are very different democracies that have very different standards, completely different career models for judges and a very different role for politics. In many cases, they are absent a constitutional democracy. They must be set carefully against a real comparative analysis, which, of course, relates to advanced common law democracies and constitutional democracies. How are we doing in that regard?