Preventive justice
Overall, public opinion seemed to welcome Tuesday’s Supreme Court decision to indict three middle-ranking judges and a prosecutor on disciplinary charges for alleged corruption, and that could lead to their dismissal. And the tough stance displayed by the court president – who vowed that «to get to the bottom of this case; heads will roll if necessary…» – was also well received… Naturally, it is impossible in advance to safeguard the judicial sector against the occasional presence of bad or perjurious judges… And the point is not to purge the system every time some journalistic report reveals evidence of corruption, but to implement a permanent monitoring system that is as free as possible of bias and political expediency so that the integrity of the judicial sector can be preserved. Alongside this mechanism, it would be desirable for the punishments exacted on perjurious officials to be severe enough to dissuade other potential culprits from following the same path… Of course, the dismissal of perjurious judges is fitting punishment but it is not enough in itself… After all, what is the sense of dismissing a perjurious judge if he retains the right to practice law from the other side of the bench, exploiting the contacts he has made during his term? With his dismissal, he should also be disbarred, permanently…
