Justice Sector and the Rule of Law - AfriMAP

included extensive coverage of human rights and the constitutional bases of liberal democracy.For such judges, the need for continuing education in human rights and constitutional law willnot be as high as it is now for their colleagues trained during the repressive environment of theone-party political order.Most professional magistrates are recent law graduates who underwent their training at atime when the curriculum had been modernised to include a substantial amount of material onhuman rights and liberal democratic constitutional law. For their part, a substantial number oflay magistrates have also had some training in human rights and constitutional law as part ofthe basic training that all magistrates undergo at the Staff Development Institute. 280 In addition,some lay magistrates are also studying part-time for the University of Malawi Faculty of Law’sdiploma, whose course content includes human rights and constitutional law. 281 Although thereare a number of opportunities for the formal academic training of magistrates in human rightsand constitutional law, it has not been possible to accommodate all of them on the programmes.Nevertheless, some of them have benefited from various in-service training workshops, seminarsand conferences that have been organised by state institutions and non-governmentalorganisations with specific interests in human rights and constitutional law, including theUnited Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. 282The impact of human rights and constitutional law training on the quality of judicial workmust be constantly monitored and evaluated. It should not be assumed that the training necessarilytranslates into an adequate appreciation of human rights by judicial officers. On the contrary,some magistrates who have received basic human rights and constitutional law trainingdo not fully appreciate the practical significance of human rights, such as the right of a criminaldefendant to remain silent. 283At least three institutions are involved in the development and enforcement of standards ofjudicial conduct. The most important of these is the Judicial Service Commission establishedunder section 116 of the Constitution. The powers of the Commission are provided for undersection 118 and include the authority ‘to exercise such disciplinary powers in relation to personsin judicial office subject to [the] Constitution….’ The other institution that has responsibility forenforcing standards of judicial conduct is Parliament, which has power under section 119(2) ofthe Constitution to remove a judge from office for misbehaviour or misconduct.The professional conduct of judicial officers is governed primarily by norms that are set outin the judiciary’s Code of Conduct and Conditions of Service, 2003. The need for the code was