administrative autonomy they inevitably lack financial autonomy because they are funded from money allocated by the Executive and Parliament. The independence of the judiciary is best maintained by the character of the judges themselves rather than through administrative autonomy. Ensuring an Effective Judiciary There is little that a constitution can do directly to ensure the judiciary does its work efficiently. Handing administrative control over the courts to the judiciary in the form of the JSC is unlikely to enhance judicial independence, as pointed out above, and it is unlikely to improve efficiency either. Good judges are not necessarily good administrators. Lack of finance has been cited as one of the reasons for the sclerosis affecting Zimbabwe’s court system. The new constitution must contain a provision obliging the government to provide the judiciary with sufficient funds. Perhaps the best the new constitution can do is to permit the JSC to lay down standards of efficiency to be observed by judicial officers, for example, requiring them to be reasonably diligent, to attend court when required, to work normal business hours, and perhaps to complete their case-loads within a reasonable time. A judicial officer who fails to observe these standards should be liable to disciplinary action and ultimately dismissal. Code of Ethical Conduct The Zimbabwean judiciary no longer enjoys the high reputation for integrity it had in the years immediately after Independence. There are good reasons for this. The economy deteriorated from the mid-1990s, eventually making it impossible for judicial officers to manage on their official salaries. This compelled them to engage in other activities such as commercial farming and trading, and made them more open to undue influence. The absence of an official code setting out clear rules of ethical conduct made it more difficult for judicial officers to resolve the serious ethical dilemmas with which they were faced. The new constitution should oblige the JSC to draw up such a code, and should declare breaches of the code to be misbehaviour justifying disciplinary action. Final Considerations No matter what fine-sounding provisions are inserted in the new constitution to secure judicial independence, such independence is meaningless if the Executive does not respect the rule of law. Where the Executive can direct the police not to investigate clear offences and not to obey court orders that the Executive does not like, the rule of law does not exist. ___________________________ 63