Made2Measure

This is the third in a series of posts exploring the three international models of justice system performance measurement and management: (1) the EU Justice Scoreboard , (2) the Global Measures of Court Performance , and (3) the CourTools . Law and justice scholars lament the spotty evidence linking rule of law and justice programs with development outcomes like economic growth, human rights, sound governance, and poverty reduction. A key cause of the evidence gap is the lack of emphasis on building in-country or domestic performance measurement and management in favor of third-party evaluations. All three international models, more or less, promote increased attention and investment in performance measurement and management – the regular and continuous monitoring, analysis, and use of performance information -- by justice officials and their institutions and justice systems themselves, not by third parties .   Capacity for performance measurement   is the ability of count...

My last blog noted three promising international models of justice system performance measurement and management: (1) the EU Justice Scoreboard , (2) the Global Measures of Court Performance , and (3) the CourTools .   All three, more or less, aim for harmonization and consistent use of a common set of justice sector performance measures. There are, of course, differences among them, but it is their commonality that is potentially transformative for justice systems around the globe. What distinguishes these three models from international global governance initiatives like the World Justice Project’s WJP Rule of Law Index™ and the American Bar Association’s Judicial Reform Index, as well as myriad program evaluations of justice and rule of law projects, is that they promote an approach to performance measurement and management that: is essentially a bottom-up instead of a top-down strategy grounded in the local ambitions of justice institutions and justice systems exercisin...

Three models of justice system performance measurement and management that have gained significant currency internationally over the last few years are: ·          the recently launched European Commission’s EU Justice Scoreboard based on the extensive work of the Council of Europe Commission for the Evaluation of the Efficiency of Justice ( CEPEJ ); ·          the Global Measures for Court Excellence developed by the International Consortium for Court Excellence as part of its International Framework for Court Excellence; and, ·            the National Center for State Courts' CourTools . All three of these models aim for consistent use by all countries and states or, in the case of the EU Justice Scoreboard , all EU member states; all three elevate to the status of core measures of performance a limited number of indicators (e.g., case clearance ra...