Judge needed

But who wants to speak French and work in Strasbourg?

Not enough good people want the job of UK judge at the European Court of Human Rights, the government has had to confess.

Your chance to sit here?

In February, the Judicial Appointments Commission announced that it was seeking a replacement for Tim Eicke, whose nine-year term expires next summer. The closing date was in April.

Now the appointments commission has announced that it is starting the process again.

“Unfortunately,” it said, “in this instance the selection exercise was not successful in providing a sufficient range of high-quality candidates for consideration and therefore the lord chancellor is pleased to re-run the exercise in a bid to attract a wide range of high-calibre candidates.”

Pleased?

It’s not clear whether candidates were put off by the previous government’s attitude to the human rights court. But, says the appointments commission,

this government is unequivocally committed to the European Convention on Human Rights and, by extension, the European Court of Human Rights. The lord chancellor considers that the role of the judge elected in respect of the United Kingdom is crucial for upholding the rule of law. Providing the highest calibre of candidates for consideration by the assembly is vital to maintain the effective functioning of the convention system.

Indeed it is. But finding someone prepared to leave the UK for nine years is not easy, which is why these foreign judicial posts are often taken by judges without family responsibilities.

Though English is the court’s dominant language, it also works in French. You’d need that anyway to live in or near Strasbourg. And it’s pretty much a requirement:

All candidates must have appropriate legal qualifications and experience and must have an active knowledge of either English or French — the languages in which court judgements are drafted — and at least a passive knowledge of the other language.

Until 1998, the United Kingdom’s judges were former Foreign Office legal advisers who would not have appointable to judicial posts in the UK.

The system has been tightened up since then. Far from being “unelected”, as critics sometimes imagine, the successful candidate is chosen from a shortlist of three by some 300 members of the Council of Europe’s Parliamentary Assembly, voting in a secret ballot.

States are required to come up with a shortlist of three fully-qualified candidates under the age of 65, one of whom must be a woman. Countries that nominate one serious lawyer and two also-rans may find their entire list rejected, meaning they must start again.

The entire process is supervised by a committee that interviews candidates and makes a recommendation to the assembly. Before that, an advisory panel of seven independent experts will give the committee its views. It has published a 14-page guide pointing out that the job is open to “a jurisconsult of recognised competence” — which includes experienced professors of law who have published widely on human rights.

And what if we can’t find anyone? Fortunately, candidates do not have to be is nationals of the country that has nominated them. Liechtenstein has never been able to find a Liechtensteiner who fits the bill. From 1980 to 1998, its Strasbourg judge was a Canadian called Ronald Macdonald.