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U.S. law firm helps design Kosovo's judicial system

Wed, 7 Jul 2010 14:07 GMT

Source: trustlaw // Olesya Dmitracova

LONDON (TrustLaw) – Few lawyers get the chance to help create a whole judicial system for a brand-new country, but that is what U.S. law firm DLA Piper did in Kosovo.

They got all the exciting challenges – and stubborn headaches – that such work entails, but didn't earn a penny; they agreed to do it all for free.

Between 2005 and 2009, DLA Piper lawyers gave Kosovar judges and prosecutors information and advice to help them draft new laws establishing the country's court and prosecution systems, and also trained legal officers in the new justice ministry.

“To give this emerging government the opportunity to make its own decisions has been very important for us. Our role has not been to indicate what the law should be - it's to facilitate the process so they can make their own decisions,” said Sheldon Krantz, a DLA Piper lawyer.

“To watch that process develop and to see the officials have an opportunity to get this neutral advice has been really rewarding for us,” he told TrustLaw.

The Kosovar lawyers had to work out the very basics: how many and what kind of courts the young country needed, how to ensure the judiciary were independent from other branches of government and how to oversee the functioning of courts and the prosecution system, among other concerns.

To help them, DLA Piper lawyers analysed similar laws in more than 20 European countries and worked out the main issues the new laws had to address.

That was very demanding work and required an enormous amount of time, Krantz said.

CHALLENGES

“The second part of the issue that has made this particularly challenging is that the players were changing over time, so that you could end up in one instance with draft laws when the United Nations was the primary protectorate but as the United Nations phased out its role and others came in, you almost had to start all over again,” he added.

“Also, as the Kosovo government went from an interim government to a more permanent government, players changed.”

The United Nations ran Kosovo from 1999, when NATO bombed Serbia to halt the killing of Albanians in a two-year Serb counter-insurgency war, until it declared independence in 2008.

Kosovo is recognised by 66 countries, including the United States and most European Union members, but not by Serbia, nor its ally Russia.

The United States is the biggest supporter of Kosovo’s independence. There are some 10,000 NATO troops and also 2,000 police, judges and prosecutors from the European Union in the country.

The draft laws have now been finalised by Kosovo’s justice ministry but have not yet been adopted.

A recent report by Brussels-based thinktank International Crisis Group corroborates Krantz’s description of the difficulties in building Kosovo’s justice system.

“Four key laws - on the courts, the Judicial Council, the prosecution service and the Prosecutorial Council - have been delayed; one, the law on courts, has gone through almost 50 drafts since 2004,” it said.

The study says the government blames the delay on disagreement between international organisations in Kosovo, especially the European Commission Liaison Office and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).

“While USAID officials deny this, they acknowledge that discussions have been ‘extensive and exhausting’ and described a process in which the government has been more a client to approve a final package than an active participant shaping that package,” it said.

A USAID subcontractor cooperated with DLA Piper lawyers in Kosovo between 2007 and 2009.

To prepare for working in Kosovo’s complex environment, each of the nine members of DLA Piper’s team had the opportunity to spend time on the ground and also studied Kosovo’s history, culture and the civil law tradition.