Building capacities abroad to solve conflicts at home. Preliminary remarks on the European policy of legal education and judicial training in CEECs

A triadic structure is key to ensure the legitimacy of the judge, that is, a prototype of the mechanism of dispute settlement adopted in complex and advanced societies. In order to promote the enforcement of the rule of law in the new member States, the European Union and the Council of Europe enacted several policy instruments, all of them aiming at providing judges and prosecutors with new arenas where they may socialize, exchange views and information, share ideas. Lawyers and private attorneys are almost absent from the targets addressed by the European policy of rule of law promotion. Therefore, knowhow and capacities are strengthened on one side of the bench – the side of the judicial actors – whereas the private side – the lawyers – seemed to be neglected. Relying on an innovative data set constructed alongside a five years of research conducted by the author, this paper addresses the issue whether or not these policy instruments will prove able to positively influence the legitimacy of the adjudication in the new members. In the last section, some hypotheses are suggested to set down a tentative research agenda for the very next future.