INTRODUCTION

This chapter is a comparative view of four samples from Asia and another four from Europe. These samples neither compose a complete picture of “Eastern countries”, nor are they limited within “Eastern”. Actually, the concept of “Eastern” or “Western,” if defined from the perspective of comparative law, is related much less to the location of a state than to its constitution, institutions, legal culture, and politics. For instance, this chapter supports an understanding that Japan is more “Western” than “Eastern,” though it is located in Asia; while “Eastern” China shares fewer problems with Singapore and South Korea in Asia than it does with Croatia in Europe.

The basic contents of accountability and transparency of civil justice focus on such issues as the external and internal independence of judges, regulations and forms of the reasoning of judgments and decisions, the transparency of civil justice through the use of information and communications technology (ICT), the publication of judicial proceedings and decisions, and the evaluation and ranking of civil justice by outsiders. To clearly get hold of such information from the sample countries, I issued a questionnaire to the national reporters to discover the concept, definition, doctrine of and relationship among judicial accountability, transparency, and independence that are embodied in the Constitution, court institutions, procedural laws, and other regulations. When the academic peers filled in the questionnaire, they provided their own analysis of the background and practical situations combined with their answers to the questionnaire. Based on the academic peers ’ contributions, I will try to give the general view as an introduction as follows.

First, in all the sample countries (which are Japan, Korea, Germany, Netherland, Croatia and China), judicial independence is generally taken as a premise of judicial transparency and accountability, and is clearly provided in the constitutions. However, in some countries such as the Netherlands, judicial transparency and accountability are regarded as a guarantee of judicial independence. Similarly, in Japan, Singapore, and Germany, judicial independence of the judges is also highly respected, while in some other countries such as China, judicial independence is defined in a limited way in the Constitution and now is strengthened by promoting judicial transparency and accountability, in contrast to Croatia, where judicial independence is deemed to have gone too far to be afforded by the judicial level.