TRAINING VIETNAM'S JUDGES: MORE WORK NEEDED

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 03 HANOI 001411 SIPDIS STATE FOR EAP/BCLTV, DRL, and DRL/PHD E.O. 12958: N/A TAGS: PGOV PHUM EAID SOCI VM SUBJECT: TRAINING VIETNAM'S JUDGES: MORE WORK NEEDED Ref: A) HCMC 0499 and previous B) HANOI 0935 C) FBIS SEP20021128000048 D) 02 HANOI 2902 ¶1. (U) Summary: The low quality of professional skills among Vietnamese judges at all levels -- local, provincial and national -- is a well-recognized problem (refs c & d). Judges for the high-profile Nam Cam trial in Ho Chi Minh City (ref a) were carefully picked from among the best available throughout the country. Undergraduate legal education became available only in 1979, and not until 1990 were new judges required to have even a bachelor's degree. Efforts to provide intensive specialized training for judges began in 1998 with the creation of a Ministry of Justice (MOJ)-managed training school. The GVN is debating the merits of establishing a National Judicial Training Academy to help improve the quality of judges and other court personnel. The GVN welcomes foreign technical assistance, including from the U.S., to improve the quality of its judges. End summary. -------------- Humble beginnings -------------- ¶2. (U) Vietnam did not even have a Ministry of Justice between 1960 and 1981; thereafter, it was considered a very backwater and under-funded Ministry until at least the 1990s. (Its subsequent rise was demonstrated with its move in 2002 to the elegantly refurbished -- at least on the exterior -- old Soviet Embassy buildings on a major thoroughfare.) No tertiary-level legal education was available until 1979. Judges were not required to have a bachelor-level degree -- in any field -- until 1990. -------------- Academic Training -------------- ¶3. (U) In Vietnam, academic legal education is offered primarily by the Hanoi Law University, the Ho Chi Minh City Law University, and the Law Faculty of Hanoi National University, although smaller law faculties also exist at Hue University, Can Tho University, Dalat University, and the National Police Academy. The Hanoi Law University, established in 1979, is the largest and most prestigious legal education program in term of numbers of students and lecturers. The Ho Chi Minh City Law University was established in 1987, initially as a branch of the Hanoi Law University. Private institutions are not yet allowed to provide legal training, according to one law professor. Vice Rector of the Hanoi Law University Le Hong Hanh told poloffs that training at law colleges, even at the graduate level, is abstract and not tailored for professional judges, trial attorneys, prosecutors, or other court officials. Graduates from law colleges are not trained for specific functions such as being a prosecutor, he asserted. The Police Academy, under the Ministry of Public Security (MPS), reportedly provides a more vocational approach, but only for MPS staff. ¶4. (U) The law bachelor's curriculum requires four years. One and a half years are devoted to classes mandated by the Ministry of Education and Training (MOET) for all Vietnamese college students, including Marxist-Leninist ideology and Ho Chi Minh thought, "scientific socialism," foreign languages, and computer courses. There is a separate set of core courses for all law students that provides basic courses in various fields of law -- criminal, civil, family, administrative, labor, land, financial, banking, and international. The core law course also includes a set of historical and comparative law classes covering theories of relations between "the state and the law," culminating in a specific study of state and law relations in Vietnam. This sequence, together with the compulsory courses, places the law and courts in the clear context of a state "guided" by the CPV. The final part of the law school curriculum is composed of specialized courses in the fields of law mentioned above as well as related classes such as criminal investigation, forensics, auditing, intellectual property, and contracts. ¶5. (U) According to law professors, there is currently some internal debate over how to handle "unclear issues" in the curriculum over the CPV's future role in the kind of "rule of law" state that Vietnam is becoming. The formal curriculum still hews closely to "the Party line," but there are a few "study groups" including professors and students that discuss such issues "rather freely," according to some foreign-educated professors. -------------- Training the next generation of judges -------------- ¶6. (U) In January 2002, a CPV Politburo resolution on "urgent judicial tasks" identified judicial training as a national priority. Also in 2002, the National Assembly revised the Ordinance on Judges and Lay Assessors to mandate that all future judges hold a certificate from MOJ's training school, which had been set up in 1998, prior to appointment. (The requirement does not hold for sitting judges.) Lay assessors, who also sit on court panels and decide cases alongside judges, still receive very little training (ref b). ¶7. (U) According to the MOJ school director, Dr. Phan Huu Thu, there have been six sessions of these one-year courses for "judges to be" thus far. Participants -- mostly court clerks with several years of experience assisting judges administratively -- are selected by district and provincial courts for their potential to win appointment as judges. They must also be otherwise qualified for the bench: candidates must be "reliable," have a bachelor's degree in law, be of "good character," and have at least four years experience in the legal field for appointment to a district court (six years for a provincial court). CPV membership is not a formal requirement. Beginning in 2004, the school will require an entrance exam to make sure that all applicants are sufficient qualified academically, Thu said. The school also has courses for other legal officials including clerks of court, notaries, and executors (court officials charged with ensuring that sentences are carried out and that appeals are handled correctly). ¶8. (U) Dr. Thu said roughly 60 per cent of course graduates had already been appointed to the bench. The aspiring judges spend eight months in the classroom. Almost all of this time is devoted to the Criminal Procedures Code and on case studies based on it, as well as on practicalities such as how to issue an arrest warrant. According to Dr. Thu (who matriculated at a French law school),the case study method used borrows elements from France, Japan, Germany, and the U.S. Students then intern for two and a half months at a court in their home province, and devote the final month to preparing for and taking the final exam. Apparently, nearly everyone passes. ¶9. (U) Dr. Thu claimed his school had already made important contributions to improving the quality of new judges, attorneys, and other court officials. However, he expressed regret that the school is still unable to provide in-service training for existing judges -- many of whom have had little or no formal academic training. Nor has the school provided training for specialized judges serving in the Labor or Economic Courts. Management of trials is not part of the curriculum, and very little attention is given to the role of the judge. -------------- --- Other Training for Court and Procuracy Officials -------------- --- ¶10. (U) The Supreme People's Court (SPC) and the Supreme People's Procuracy (SPP) also manage separate schools providing professional training for their respective staffs. The SPC training school, established in 1994, is a modest affair with just a few rotating trainers, providing only short-term training. Serving judges teach the courses. Some courses cover relevant laws for judges newly assigned to various specialized courts. There are also general in- service training courses lasting one to two months that include topics ranging from how to interpret laws to courtroom management. A main focus has been to provide at least some training for pre-1990 appointees who often have little or no formal training. SPC officials say that they would like to expand the school, currently housed in four or five dilapidated rooms of the SPC building in Hanoi, to provide more thorough training, but lament that there is no funding to do so. ¶11. (U) The SPP runs two "colleges" -- in Ho Chi Minh City and in Hanoi -- providing both short-term and long-term training for prosecutors and other Procuracy staff. The colleges no longer offer bachelor's degree programs but instead offer a one-year intensive course for Procuracy employees who already have bachelor's degrees in law. This certificate is now a requirement for appointment as a prosecutor. -------------- A National Judicial Academy? -------------- ¶12. (U) According to Director Thu of the MOJ training school, discussions are underway on the establishment of a national judicial academy to provide advanced training for all types of court officials, merging the separate institutes under the Ministry of Justice, the Supreme People's Court, and the Supreme People's Procuracy. At present, the differing approaches of these schools reportedly have led to a less than harmonious approach to legal training. Thu said he personally favored putting the academy under the Ministry of Justice. ¶13. (U) Le Huu The, Director of the SPP Procuratorial Science Institute, and Nguyen Van Don, Director of the Hanoi Procuracy College, separately dismissed the necessity of making their training institutions part of a bigger academy. Both pointed out that the training of employees must be in line with the Procuracy's overall personnel plan and underscored their discomfort with the idea of the MOJ running an institution that would train Procuracy staff. ¶14. (U) Deputy Director Ngo Cuong of the SPC Judicial Science Institute also voiced doubts that the MOJ would do a good job running such an institution. Cuong criticized the current MOJ training school for being already unable to meet the needs of its students and their employers. Cuong claimed that the school's curriculum was too focused on how to carry out procedural functions such as issuing documents. According to Cuong, "most of the students in classes for judges have long worked as clerks of court. They should already know court procedures very well." Cuong criticized the MOJ school for failing to provide practical training on how to run a courtroom and how to deal with actual cases. He admitted that the MOJ school is useful for training notaries and executors, and perhaps even attorneys, but asserted that the SPC should take the lead in both long- and short-term professional training for judges. -------------- Comment -------------- ¶15. (U) However the GVN decides to train judges, part of their training must be to develop the role of the judge as an impartial "moderator" between prosecutor and defense attorney. Officials such as the SPC's Cuong recognize this and complain that current training neglects this aspect of a judge's work and perpetuates the dominant role of the prosecutor in the courtroom, where approximately 95 pct of all cases end in conviction. (Even higher during the just- concluded Nam Cam case.) Common wisdom in Vietnam holds that prosecutors and judges generally determine the outcomes of trials before they even begin. One attorney claimed that judges have been known to ask defendants questions such as, "When did you commit the crime?" ¶16. (U) CPV and GVN officials have spoken of the need for speeding up Vietnam judicial reform process for several years, and have prioritized upgrading the capabilities of judges and other court officials. This will require not only elevating the role and responsibility of judges, but also allowing defense attorneys to operate on a more genuinely equal footing with prosecutors (septel). It will require years to develop genuinely knowledgeable judges and defense attorneys, as well as to overcome a legal culture dominated by prosecutors and police. ¶17. (U) Some USG assistance is already underway toward the goal of improving the quality of judges through mechanisms such as the USAID-funded STAR program (in support of U.S.- Vietnam Bilateral Trade Agreement implementation),the U.S.- Vietnam Trade Council BTA and legal curriculum programs, and PAS International Visitors programs. The UNDP Legal Needs Assessment (ref d) targets areas for foreign technical assistance, including strengthening the legal education system. Vietnamese judges, from Presiding Judge of the Supreme People's Court Nguyen Van Hien on down, have expressed strong interest in learning more about the U.S. court system. A delegation from the Supreme People's Court, possibly led by Justice Hien, is planning to visit the U.S. in summer 2003 under the auspices of the STAR program. PORTER