OSCE Mission to BiH has published a report on the responses of the BiH judiciary to corruption. The report outlines the the lack of transparency and the impunity surrounding those charged with corruption. But, the report seems to reinforce one worrying trend.

That is the focus of the author(s) of the report on trust in the judiciary and on actions that would lead to the return of trust. This follows the logic of the Priebe report which highlights the lack of trust both of the public in the judiciary and within the judiciary itself.

Surely, the lack of trust does represent a problem. But, the risk we run here is that we reduce the judiciary to its rotten apples and that we map the entire judicial system as untrustworthy. This is not so: most of the judges do or at least try to do good work, most of the time.

Recently, at the @BelSecForum, I had an opportunity to talk to Reinhard Priebe, the author of the report on the judiciary. He emphasized the lack of legal culture as one of the main reasons for the overall low quality of the BiH judiciary.

Maybe it is just an unfortunate choice of words but when we focus on things such as trust and culture, variables difficult to measure in social sciences, we risk to present the problems within the judiciary as unsolvable.

A better way of dealing with the situation and describing it would be to focus on those who systematically obstruct investigations for high political corruption. There is no need for broad and sweeping assessments about the judiciary as a whole.

Because if there is no culture than there will be no trust and if there is, indeed no trust then why invest in the reform in the first place? But, if the BiH citizens indeed have no faith in the judiciary then why do they bring so many claims before the courts?

I think they do so because the courts remain the place where they hope to find and get some justice, something that they stand a much less chance of receiving from any other state institutions. That makes the management of the courts and the judicial institutions a priority.