Courts Implement Serbia’s First Code of Conduct for Court Staff

Pilot courts participating in the Serbia Rule of Law Project successfully completed a six-month process of developing Serbia's first Code of Conduct for Court Staff.  The Code was finalized at a second roundtable meeting on March 31, 2006.  Drawing from US and international Codes of Conduct, representatives (judges and court staff) from the project's six pilot courts, as well as from the Supreme Court and Ministry of Justice (MOJ), worked with NCSC over the course of two roundtables and a comment and drafting period to reach a final consensus agreement.  

Code provisions include standards on key ethical issues for all non-judicial staff such as:  professionalism, responsibility to the public, behavior inside and outside the court, protecting confidential information, conflicts of interest, gifts, abuse of position, and reporting inappropriate behavior, among others.  These will be important criteria in assessing court staff performance and ethical behavior that will be implemented and enforced by court presidents.

Assistant Minister of the MOJ, Zivka Spasic, provided the opening address at the second roundtable.  In her speech she complimented NCSC's work on the code, praised its content, and pledged national implementation through inclusion of the Code in Serbia's Court Rules of Procedure.

The code can be found on the Serbia Rule of Law website at www.ncsc.org.yu.

The Roundtable was facilitated by NCSC consultants Kathryn Fahnestock and Dr. Barry Mahoney, who have worked closely with the courts throughout the project on issues relating to backlog and delay reduction, and Prof. Speedy Rice, who assisted in drafting the code based on feedback from the Serbian courts.