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3 Utrecht L. Rev. 1 (2007)

handle is hein.journals/utrecht3 and id is 1 raw text is: Special issue of the Utrecht Law Review
Adjudication in a globalizing context
Anthony M. Hol & Philip M. Langbroek*
Introduction
Globalization from a European perspective started with Portugal's travel and trade links with
India, Indonesia, China, Japan and Latin America, followed by the Netherlands, Spain and
England, along with the colonization of North America. It is a perspective with a 600-year
history, if not more. New, however, is that the internationalization of production, trade, travel,
migration and marriage have intensified and grown so quickly in size and speed that it is no
longer possible to rely on one national jurisdiction in order to have legal certainty. Between states
there is a growing grid of treaty-based rules to address the need for legal certainty in international
relations concerning production, trade, animal protection, family affairs, crime etc. In order to
have these rules legitimately enforced and applied, adjudication based on the rule of law is a
necessity. This comprises the entire spectrum of national judicial organizations, judges, courts,
judicial administration, court administration and public prosecutions offices, along with suprana-
tional courts such as the European Court for Human Rights and the international criminal courts.
Judicial administration traditionally involves the preparation and organization of court
hearings, but also the development and application of judicial policies on operating rules of
procedure and, for certain categories of cases, policies on the content of judgments. For the
international dimension the exchange of views and opinions ofjudges over national borders can
be added to that, not necessarily limited to judges of the supreme courts.! Judges from the British
Commonwealth meet from time to time, Councils for the Judiciary' and Councils of State in
Europe have founded international associations,3 and slowly an entire infrastructure for the
transborder cooperation of judges and judiciaries emerges.
Court administration comprises the management and organization of the courts, and all that
is associated with these tasks, closely related to the administration of justice. The relation
between courts and the other state powers take shape in financial arrangements for court
organizations and are essential for safeguarding judicial independence.4 Also in this domain, an
* Anthony Hol is chairman and Philip Langbroek is a member of the editorial board of the Utrecht Law Review (contact: A.Hol@law.uu.nl;
P.Langbroek@law.uu.nl).
1 Bas de Gaay Fortman, in: 'Adventurous judgments, a comparative exploration into human rights as a moral-political force in judicial law
development', 2006 Utrecht Law Review 2, pp. 22-43, also hinted at this development.
2  The European Network Councils for the Judiciary, see http://www.encj.net/
3 Association ofthe Councils of State and ofthe Supreme Administrative Jurisdictions ofthe European Union, see http://www.juradmin.eu/en/
home en.html
4  For a comparison between the development of court administration in Eastern Europe and in the USA, see Markus B. Zimmer, 'Judicial
Independence in Central and East Europe: the Institutional Context' 2006 Tulsa Journal of Comparative & International Law, pp. 53-85.

http://Www. utrechtlawreview. org/ Volume 3, Issue ] (June) 2007