Walter Barone, president of the International Association of Judges (IAJ) and a magistrate on the Public Law Chamber of the Court of Justice of Sao Paulo, Brazil, said attempts to criminalize the work of judges are among the most serious pressures facing the judiciary around the world. Barone made the remarks during a visit to Lima this week, where he spoke about the global problem of political and institutional harassment of judges and prosecutors over their rulings.
Barone, who led the Latin American Federation of Magistrates (FLAM) from 2018 to 2022, was elected president of the IAJ in October last year. He described the association as the largest international body of judges, currently representing 93 countries, with a vote expected at its next meeting on admitting a 94th member, Honduras. The IAJ's members are not individual judges but national judges' associations or regional groups, and the body also holds consultative status at the United Nations, where it takes part in activities on legal issues and presents its positions on judicial systems.
How the IAJ Is Organized
Barone said the union is split into four regional groups to manage its work across time zones and continents: an Ibero-American group covering Latin America, Portugal and Spain, known as IBA; a European group; an African group; and a group called ANAO, made up of the United States, Canada, Asia, Australia and New Zealand.
Asked about the most complex case he has reviewed since taking office, Barone pointed to Anas Hmedi, president of the judges' association in Tunisia, who was convicted in April over his leadership of a protest against what the IAJ considers the irregular dismissal of more than 50 judges and the dissolution of Tunisia's judiciary council. Barone said Hmedi's immunity as association president was not respected and that he left the country to avoid imprisonment, remaining abroad. He also cited the case of Murat Arslan, president of the judges' association in Turkey, who has been imprisoned for a decade.
Criminalization and Disciplinary Pressure
Barone said the most pressing threat to judges today is the criminalization of their rulings, warning that several countries have draft laws that would treat a mistaken legal interpretation as a crime. He asked who would decide when an interpretation was wrong, arguing that any error should be corrected through appeals rather than prosecution. He said criminal charges are often used to intimidate judges over their decisions, alongside the abusive use of disciplinary procedures triggered by rulings and social media campaigns aimed at damaging judges' reputations.
Peru's Ordonez Case
Barone said the IAJ's Ibero-American group has closely followed developments in Peru over the past year and has issued two statements on the case of judge Oswaldo Ordonez, who was removed from office over an opinion he gave outside his judicial functions, in his role as president of Peru's magistrates' association. Barone said Ordonez was not found lacking in his performance as a judge, and that evaluators in fact recognized his suitability, but that his removal was based instead on statements he made criticizing draft Peruvian laws before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.
Barone said the periodic ratification system used to evaluate judges is already widely debated internationally as a potential tool of intimidation or retaliation, and that international bodies generally favor judges being appointed indefinitely, until retirement, rather than facing periodic ratification.
Tension With Congress
On the broader situation in Peru, Barone pointed to the recent confrontation between the president of the Judiciary and President Keiko Fujimori, in which the former asked Fujimori to stop pressure on judges coming from Congress. Barone said he was concerned about the use of disciplinary procedures against judges over their rulings, describing it as a method meant not only to intimidate the judge involved but to send a warning to others, as if to say that any judge who rules a certain way will face the same penalties. He said this endangers judicial independence.
The Rospigliosi Case
Asked about Fernando Rospigliosi, a senator from the governing party who has taken up the defense of military personnel and police officers under investigation for human rights violations and has pushed laws to protect them, and who has gone after judges who have not applied those laws, calling them corrupt and seeking their removal, Barone said he recalled news coverage of Rospigliosi's criticism of the Judiciary. Barone said his concern centers on colleagues who have used diffuse constitutional review, the mechanism allowing a judge to set aside a law considered unconstitutional, which he described as a normal tool available to judges in every country. He said that mechanism is instead being used as grounds to open disciplinary investigations against judges who applied it, and that any party disagreeing with a ruling should appeal it rather than pursue the judge through disciplinary channels.
