Do judges spend a lot of time on ‘vacation’?

Over the past decade, a huge case backlog has ranked high among the challenges that the Judiciary is battling with.

But a quick analysis by this publication shows that judicial officers spend about two months every year not attending court, which period, if well utilised, would go a long way in dealing with the monster of backlog, which currently stands at more than 46,000 cases.

A case becomes backlogged when it has been in the justice system for more than two years without being heard and determined.

Breakdown of the annual leave
The annual court vacation for the High Court and magistrate courts runs for a month. The same court vacation commenced at the weekend and will end on August 15.

During this period, cases of civil nature are not heard. However, those of criminal nature continue to be heard.

In Uganda, there are two mandatory annual court vacations for every court and they are part of the judicial calendar. The Supreme Court and Court of Appeal’s civil vacation is between August 1 and 31 every year.

The annual judges’ conference/ new law year and prosecutors’ annual symposium take about two weeks of the judicial officers’ time.

For example, the annual judges’ conference that is usually held in January or early February of each year runs for four days, with the fifth day being used for the opening of the new law year. So the entire week is gone with no court activity. There is also the annual prosecutors’ symposium, which takes a week. During the prosecutors’ week which culminates in the annual Joan Kagezi Memorial Lecture, judicial officers don’t work because they do not have prosecutors. Some of the judicial officers are invited as guests at the symposium.

The Joan Kagezi memorial lecture is in honour of the works of assistant DPP Joan Kagezi who was killed on March 30, 2015.

All judicial officers are entitled to a two-week Christmas break running from December 23 to January 7 of the New Year. When you total up the aforementioned breaks, judicial officers enjoy more than two months of leave every year.

However, Principal Judge Flavian Zeija, while opening the two-day mediation symposium for judges in Kampala last week, said as judicial officers, they are overworked and that he is even forced to wake up at 4am to write pending judgments.

What Judiciary says
“We don’t take leave to go and have a holiday at the beach; this is because sometimes, you find that you have so many pending judgments and the two weeks you take off, that is the time you are to sit and write judgments,” Justice Zeija said. 

Likewise, the public relations officer of the Judiciary, Mr Jamson Karemani, said ahead of the start of the annual court vacation last week that the judicial officers use the vacation to write pending rulings and judgments.

“This is a period between the end of one term of court and the beginning of another specifically for civil cases. This period is utilised by judicial officers to write judgments and rulings,” Mr Karemani said in a press statement.

He acknowledged that the annual events may delay work but they are very important to equip judicial officials with necessary skills.

“You cannot avoid having these events, workshops, symposiums. You cannot say that judicial officials will work without workshops because it’s where they get the necessary skills to work better,” he said.