Institutional Trustworthiness, Transformative Judicial Education and Transitional Justice: A Palestinian Experience

Abstract

Using Palestine as its case study, this chapter posits that judicial trustworthiness represents an important ameliorating factor for transitional justice to take hold and that judicial education constitutes an ameliorating factor that can nurture judicial trustworthiness. Distinguishing trust, distrust and trustworthiness, we explain the importance of judicial institutional trustworthiness as an ameliorating factor. Drawing on literature that identifies institutional trustworthiness as a function of three features: ability, integrity and benevolence, we then explore how the Karamah model of judicial education helped build judicial institutional trustworthiness. Karamah was developed in Palestine and adopted dignity as its overarching theme. Working with an interdisciplinary and international team through Karamah, Palestinian judges invoked dignity as a legal principle, a statement of shared political values and an aspect of their professional identity. In the process, they articulated a framework for thinking about the ability, integrity and benevolence of the Palestinian judiciary. Finally, we chronicle the ways in which the Karamah model of judicial education impacted the judiciary and the judiciary system in Palestine. We end with a note of caution: if rule of law programming, judicial reform and judicial education are substituted for transitional justice measures, conflicts can become even more intractable.