ADMINISTRATION OF JUSTICE BY SOCIAL COURTS IN ETHIOPIA: NORMATIVE AND COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS

Abstract

Social courts have been grassroots judicial institutions for a long time, playing their role in ensuring justice concerning petty matters. Despite debates on their constitutionality, social courts are still operating as the judicial wing of the lower administrative unit. The
administration of justice by a social court is one of the under-researched issues. To fill this gap, this study employed a combination of normative and empirical methods to examine the effectiveness of social courts and the challenges they faced. Normative approaches were used to comparatively study regional social court laws, while empirical approaches were employed to examine practices and challenges of social courts in the administration of justice. As the findings of the study revealed, despite its contribution to access to justice, the administration of justice by the social court is subject to multifaceted challenges attributable to the incompetence of judges, jurisdictional ambiguity, and lack of access to necessary facilities that negate its effectiveness and question its very existence. To overcome these challenges, this article recommends a comprehensive reform that includes revisiting the laws and implementing capacity-building programs. The study also calls for a nationwide study of the administration of justice by the social court to fill gaps and facilitate the transfer of good practices.