Who judges judges?

Since 1994, El Salvador’s supreme court has removed or suspended one judge per month, on average. This is an astonishing record for a country in Latin America, where disciplinary actions against judges are still very rare. And yet it has not eliminated Salvadorans’ doubts about integrity in the courts.

Part of the reason is that after the 1992 peace agreements some groups called for an immediate purge of several dozen allegedly corrupt judges. Claiming such a move would have been illegal. The court instead set up an internal committee that began a slow process of hearing accusations, assessing evidence, and taking disciplinary measures.

While many critics of the reform concede that a one-time purge would have been improper, they argue that the Supreme Court should not be in charge of disciplining itself, lower court judges and the legal profession as a whole. They claim that Supreme Court justices are unlikely to accuse each other, and they say that the risk of sanction by the court, which also makes final decisions on promotions, undermines judicial independence in the lower courts.

These concerns led to a constitutional amendment in 1991 that gave the National Judicial Council the power to evaluate judges accused of wrongdoing. The council presents its evaluations to the Supreme Court, which then conducts its own inquiry and retains the exclusive power to sanction. This arrangement has not satisfied critics of the reform, who say the council should both evaluate and sanction judges without the interference of the Supreme Court.