There are 3 bodies that have the authority to initiate disciplinary proceedings against a judge: these bodies are defined by Article 145 of the Constitutional Law “Judicial Code”. This article was last updated on 25 March, 2020.

The following shall be entitled to institute disciplinary proceedings against a judge:

 (1) The Ethics and Disciplinary Commission,

(2) The authorized body,

(3) The Commission for the Prevention of Corruption.

Iravaban.net has reviewed the disciplinary proceedings initiated in 2020, 2021 and 2022 as of 15 November of this year

It should be noted that in the mentioned years, disciplinary proceedings were initiated mostly by the Minister of Justice, and the number was, more than the previous one in every subsequent year.

Let’s remind that in 2021, the anti-corruption body of the Council of Europe, GRECO, published a regular report on the implementation of the recommendations made in the framework of the Fourth Evaluation Round, point 78 in the section of its conclusions, referred to the judicial system. It is stated:

“With regard to the judiciary, the role of the Minister of Justice in disciplinary procedures against judges has not been discontinued and the current situation is not compatible with judicial independence.

Proper appeal mechanisms have been provided for decisions on the recruitment and promotion of judges but not for dismissal decisions…”

However, at that time on 30 September 202, the Minister of Justice Karen Andreasyan, during a briefing with journalists after the regular session of the Government, answering the question of bringing judges to disciplinary responsibility, he stated: “I will initiate much more disciplinary proceedings, I will be much more attentive to violations by judges, and for this purpose I have involved many more employees, so that we can see what mistakes a judge makes in the system, procedural or material, so that disciplinary proceedings are initiated.”

In fact, it turned out that Karen Andreasyan did this.

On 7 October, 2022, according to the results of the secret voting held in the Supreme Judicial Council, Karen Andreasyan, a scientific member of the Council, was elected to the position of the CJC Chairman.

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According to the decisions on disciplinary proceedings published on the official website of the RA Judiciary, we have the following picture of the proceedings initiated to bring judges to disciplinary responsibility.

It should be noted that the presented statistics do not include the petitions submitted regarding the scientific members of the SJC and the petition submitted by the Special Commission regarding Ruben Vardazaryan, the Chairman of the SJC at that period (powers suspended), Judge of the Court of the First Instance of General Jurisdiction of Yerevan, whose powers were suspended.

PS – In order to make the statistics more factual, we applied to the Judicial Department with a written request, because according to Article 19 of the Constitutional Law “Judicial Code”, the Judicial Department collects and maintains judicial statistics. Clause 3 of Part 10 of this article stipulates “with regard to the disciplinary liability of judges and imposed termination of their powers: the number of instituted disciplinary proceedings and proceedings for imposed termination of powers — according to entities having instituted the proceedings and to the grounds for instituting the proceedings; number of cases in which the proceedings were dismissed — according to entities having instituted the proceedings; number of cases in which disciplinary liability was entailed and those of imposed termination of powers and data on the outcome of the proceedings instituted against a judge (including on the type of the penalty).”

As a result, an amendment may be made in the statistics presented above, and an additional note will be made in this material. However, let’s emphasize that the possible amendment will not change the general picture of the initiated proceedings. 

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