Najah National University 

Faculty of Graduate Studies 

 

 

 

 

 
 

Improving the Court's Performance 

in Palestine Concerning the Time 

Spent Until the Case Disposition 

 

 

By   

Darweesh Darweesh 

 

 

Supervisor 

 Dr. Mohammad Othman 

 

 
This Thesis is Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for 

the Degree of Master of Engineering Management, Faculty of Graduate 

Studies, An-Najah National University, Nablus, Palestine. 

2016 





III 

Dedication 

My Affectionate Parents 

Brothers and Sisters. 

Special Dedication To 

My Father 

My Mother 

With my Respect and Love 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



IV 

Acknowledgments 

I am seizing the opportunity of this research to thank everyone contributed 

to conducte this research and the ideas developed in this study.  

First, I offer my all respect and appreciation to my parents where they have been 

providing me the support and for all the efforts they spent to give me the 

precious information which helped strongly in the success fulfillment of thesis. 

Also all respect and appreciation to my thesis supervisor doctor Mohammad 

Othman the head of industrial engineering department and the coordinator 

of Master of Engineering Management program who always strives to help 

me in different areas and beyond this research. The Palestinian HJC 

represented by its president and staff members, they deserve all respect for 

their cooperation to add value to this research and in providing the precious 

information. The courts of Nablus and Ramallah governorates represented 

by their presidents and staffs, they provided me the required data to conduct 

my analysis and results.     

They all are the key contributors in this study. Their participation and 

cooperation enabled me to gather needed information for this study.  

 

 

 

 

 





VI 

Table of Contents 
 

Dedication ..................................................................................................................... III 

Acknowledgments ......................................................................................................... IV 

Declaration ..................................................................................................................... V 

Table of Contents .......................................................................................................... VI 

List of Tables ................................................................................................................. IX 

List of Figures ................................................................................................................. X 

List of Abbreviations .................................................................................................... XI 

Terminology ................................................................................................................ XII 

Abstract ........................................................................................................................ XX 

Chapter One ...................................................................................................................... 1 

Introduction ....................................................................................................................... 1 

FOREWORD ................................................................................................................... 1 

1.1. OVERVIEW ............................................................................................................. 1 

1.1.1.The Independency of Judiciary ......................................................................... 5 

1.1.2.Counter Cases ................................................................................................... 5 

1.1.3.The Settlement Judge in Civil Cases ................................................................ 6 

1.1.4.How Judges Are Chosen ................................................................................... 7 

1.1.5.Some Interests of the Research ......................................................................... 8 

1.2. STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM ................................................................................ 9 

1.3. IMPORTANCE OF THE RESEARCH .......................................................................... 12 

1.4. OBJECTIVES OF THE RESEARCH ............................................................................ 13 

1.5. QUESTIONS OF THE RESEARCH ............................................................................. 14 

1.6. LIMITATIONS OF THE RESEARCH .......................................................................... 14 

Chapter Two ................................................................................................................... 15 

Literature review ............................................................................................................. 15 

2.1. HISTORICAL OVERVIEW ........................................................................................ 15 

2.1.1. Judicial System Reform in Italy .................................................................... 15 

2.1.2. Does Court Efficiency have a Deterrent Effect on Crime – Costa Rica - 

2010…………… ............................................................................................ 16 

2.1.3. Congestion and Delay in the Court System in Asia's Courts - 1985 ............. 16 

2.1.4. Delay and Settlement in Litigation - 1999 ..................................................... 17 

2.1.5. A Study on Delay in the Disposal of Civil Litigation – 2013 ....................... 17 

2.1.6. Court Performance Indicators ........................................................................ 17 

2.1.7. Court Performance around the World ............................................................ 19 

2.1.8. Use of Data in Performance Measurement in Chicago-USA-2013 ............... 22 



VII 

2.1.9. Case Flow Management Process ................................................................... 23 

2.1.10.Measuring Court Performance-Hong Kong Court of Final Appeal - 2006 .. 25 

2.1.11. Palestinians' Evaluation of Justice Institutions – UNDP - 2012 .................. 25 

2.1.12. Administration of Criminal Justice in Palestine – 2010 .............................. 26 

2.1.13. Musawah Evaluation Report for the Justice sector in Palestine .................. 28 

2.1.14. The Judge Effort Spent Working on Cases.................................................. 29 

2.1.15. The Notifications are the Basis of Judicial Fulfilment ................................ 30 

2.1.16. Expediting Case Litigation Process through Setting Life Spans ................. 32 

2.1.17. The Evolution of Court's Information System in Palestine ......................... 32 

Chapter Three ................................................................................................................. 36 

Research Methodology ................................................................................................... 36 

3.1. STUDY APPROACH ................................................................................................ 36 

3.2. RESEARCH FRAMEWORK ...................................................................................... 38 

3.3. THE SAMPLING ..................................................................................................... 40 

3.3.1. The Research Community ............................................................................. 40 

3.3.2. The Sample Size ............................................................................................ 41 

3.4. DATA COLLECTION .............................................................................................. 43 

3.5. RESEARCH TOOLS ................................................................................................ 44 

3.6. EXPLORATORY INTERVIEWS ................................................................................. 44 

3.7. QUESTIONNAIRES ................................................................................................. 45 

3.8. QUALITY STANDARDS FOR RESEARCH TOOLS ..................................................... 46 

3.8.1.Pilot Study ...................................................................................................... 46 

Chapter Four ................................................................................................................... 47 

The Facets of This Research ........................................................................................... 47 

4.1. THE FACTORS AFFECTING TIME TO DISPOSITION ................................................. 47 

4.2. PROCEEDINGS OVERVIEW .................................................................................... 54 

4.2.1.The Notifications in Palestine's Court System ............................................... 54 

4.2.2.Choice of Settlement....................................................................................... 56 

4.2.3.Court Docket ................................................................................................... 57 

4.2.4.Citizens' Waiting Time ................................................................................... 58 

4.2.5.Sufficiency of Evidences ................................................................................ 59 

4.3. JUDICIAL SUPPORT SYSTEM ................................................................................. 61 

4.3.1.First Judicial Support Processes ..................................................................... 64 

4.3.2.The Processes and Procedures of the Second Judicial Support ...................... 67 

4.3.3.Implementation of the Judicial Support Project ............................................. 73 

4.3.4.The Requirements of Comprehensive Implementation of the Judicial Support 

Project…………. ............................................................................................ 74 

4.4. STANDARDS FOR CASE FLOW MANAGEMENT ...................................................... 75 

4.5. NEED FOR QUEUING SYSTEM................................................................................ 78 

4.6. POTENTIAL SOLUTIONS ........................................................................................ 80 

4.7. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION ................................................................................... 81 



VIII 

4.7.1.Performance Measures.................................................................................... 82 

1) Clearance Rate (CR) ....................................................................................... 92 

2) Time to Disposition ........................................................................................ 95 

3) Age of Active Pending Cases ......................................................................... 97 

4) Trial Date Certainty ........................................................................................ 98 

5) Court Employee Satisfaction .......................................................................... 99 

6) Judge/Justice Evaluation Survey .................................................................. 107 

7) Cost per Case ................................................................................................ 111 

4.7.2.Regression Analysis...................................................................................... 112 

4.7.3.Discussion ..................................................................................................... 121 

Chapter Five .................................................................................................................. 129 

The Study Summary and Recommendations ................................................................ 129 

5.1. THE STUDY SUMMARY ....................................................................................... 129 

5.2. CONCLUSION ...................................................................................................... 131 

5.3. RECOMMENDATIONS .......................................................................................... 136 

5.4. RESEARCH CONTRIBUTION ................................................................................. 138 

5.5. FUTURE WORK ................................................................................................... 139 

References ..................................................................................................................... 140 

Appendices .................................................................................................................... 148 

Appendix 1 .................................................................................................................... 148 

Appendix 2 .................................................................................................................... 150 

Appendix 3 .................................................................................................................... 152 

Appendix 4 .................................................................................................................... 154 

Thesis Discussion Committee’ Members ..................................................................... 155 

لملخصا  ب ................................................................................................................................ 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



IX 

List of Tables 
Table (2. 1): Comparison of CR around the world (Dakolia, 1999) ............................... 21 

Table (2. 2): Results of Musawah Evaluation Report – Litigants Group in West Bank 29 

Table (2. 3): Judicial hours required for several case types (Dabbas, 2014) .................. 30 

Table (2. 4):The rotatory cases because of the failure of notification process in 2013 

(Awwad, 2014) .......................................................................................... 31 
 

Table (4. 1): The occurrences of causes ......................................................................... 53 

Table (4. 2): Palestinian Civil CFMS Standards ............................................................. 75 

Table (4. 3): Model time standards (Model Time Standards. NCSC, 2011) .................. 76 

Table (4. 4): Model standard of Felony cases ................................................................. 77 

Table (4. 5): Model standard of Misdemeanor cases ...................................................... 77 

Table (4. 6): Model standard of General civil cases ....................................................... 78 

Table (4. 7): Descriptive statistics for Access and Fairness survey ................................ 91 

Table (4. 8): Clearance rate per judge-2015 (Rummaneh, 2016) ................................... 94 

Table (4. 9): Time needed to dispose some different types of cases .............................. 94 

Table (4. 10): Time to disposition – Civil (Rummaneh, 2016) ...................................... 96 

Table (4. 11): Summary Report of Trial Settings ........................................................... 99 

Table (4. 12): The environmental and motivational factors ......................................... 100 

Table (4. 13): Cost per case (NIS)-Nablus Court ......................................................... 112 

Table (4. 14):  Descriptive statistics for Regression analysis ....................................... 113 

Table (4. 15): Model summary for the models of case types ....................................... 114 

Table (4. 16): Analysis of Variance .............................................................................. 115 

Table (4. 17): Coefficients of Regression ..................................................................... 116 

Table (4. 18): Sensitivity analysis for the case type models of predicting time to 

disposition ............................................................................................. 120 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



X 

List of Figures 
Figure (1. 1): Levels of Courts in Palestine ...................................................................... 3 

Figure (2. 1): Clearance rate of courts around the world (Dakolia, 1999)……….….….20 

Figure (2. 2): The Proceedings-a Penal Case starts by Arrest (Sallmann, 1995) ........... 24 

Figure (3. 1): Research framework………………………………………………….….40 

Figure (4. 1): The first judicial support (Muhemeed, 2015)……………………………62 

Figure (4. 2): The second judicial support (Muhemeed, 2015) ...................................... 62 

Figure (4. 3): The final stage (Muhemeed, 2015) ........................................................... 63 

Figure (4. 4): The phases of the judicial Support system (Muhemeed, 2015) ................ 63 

Figure (4. 5): Judicial support processes (Muhemeed, 2015) ......................................... 64 

Figure (4. 6): The first judicial support processes (Muhemeed, 2015) ........................... 65 

Figure (4. 7): Case screening (Muhemeed, 2015) .......................................................... 65 

Figure (4. 8): Case classifying and registering (Muhemeed, 2015) ................................ 66 

Figure (4. 9): Case scheduling (Muhemeed, 2015) ........................................................ 66 

Figure (4. 10): The second judicial support processes (Muhemeed, 2015) .................... 67 

Figure (4. 11): Issuing lawsuit (Muhemeed, 2015) ........................................................ 68 

Figure (4. 12): Attending the session date (Muhemeed, 2015) ...................................... 69 

Figure (4. 13): The continuous improvement - PDCA cycle - ....................................... 74 

Figure (4. 14): Queuing system ...................................................................................... 80 

Figure (4. 15): Access survey - Percentage of who responds agree and/or strongly agree

 ................................................................................................................. 84 

Figure (4. 16): Percentage of responses per case type .................................................... 85 

Figure (4. 17): Access & Fairness survey responses by case type ................................. 87 

Figure (4. 18): Overall index score ................................................................................. 87 

Figure (4. 19): Percentages by action ............................................................................. 88 

Figure (4. 20): Percentages by how often the customer visits the court ......................... 88 

Figure (4. 21): Percentages by gender ............................................................................ 88 

Figure (4. 22): Age of active pending cases (Civil) ........................................................ 97 

Figure (4. 23): Average response scores for court employee survey ............................ 104 

Figure (4. 24): Percentages of judges who Agree/S Agree ........................................... 108 

Figure (4. 25): Responses of agreement in performance per experience ...................... 108 

Figure (4. 26): Responses of attorneys regarding the judge performance .................... 110 

Figure (4. 27): Years of practice of attorneys ............................................................... 111 

Figure (4. 28): How often did the appealed cases win? ................................................ 111 

Figure (4. 29): Residual plots for time to disposition- Models by case type ................ 114 

Figure (5. 1): Monitoring System………….……………………………………….….136 

 

 

 

 



XI 

List of Abbreviations 
PJI The Palestinian Judicial Institute 

PJS The Palestinian Justice Sector (Judicial System) 

HJC The High Judicial Council 

HC The High Court 

JAL The Judicial Authority law 

MOJ Ministry of Justice 

CJS Criminal Justice System 

PBA Palestinian Bar Association 

OPT Occupied Palestinian Territories 

ADR Alternative Dispute Resolution 

PNA Palestinian National Authority 

PBM Palestinian Board of Ministers 

CCTL Commercial and Civil Trials Law 

PTL Penal Trials Law 

UNDP United Nations Development Program 

NCSC National Center for State Courts 

CFMS Case Flow Management System 

CR Clearance Rate 

CGR Congestion Rate 

JSS Judicial Support System 

PDCA Plan-Do-Check-Act 

SPSS Statistical Package for Social Sciences 

 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 



XII 

Terminology 

A 

Access and Fairness: Accessibility and fairness of the judicial services. 

Age of Active Pending: The time from case filing to the time of 

measurement. 

Accidental Sampling: Non-probability sampling method that relies on data 

collection from population members who are conveniently available to 

participate in study. 

Administrative Court: Located in the High Court, and responsible for the 

judges-related issues. 

Arraignment: Is the defendant's initial appearance before the Court, the 

defendant will be informed of the charges against him/her. 

Affidavits: A written sworn statement of fact made by parties administered 

by a person authorized to do. 

Adversaries: the litigants in a lawsuit. 

Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR): A variety of processes that help 

parties resolve disputes without a trial such as Arbitration.  

Arbitration: a neutral person called an "arbitrator" hears arguments and 

evidence from each side and then decides the outcome.  In binding 

arbitration, parties agree to accept the arbitrator’s judgment as 



XIII 

final.  In nonbinding arbitration, the parties may request a trial if they do not 

accept the arbitrator’s judgment. 

C 

Congestion Rate (CGR): The ratio of case backlog to cases disposed. 

Clearance Rate (CR): The ratio of cases disposed to cases filed.  

Case Disposition: The termination of a court case. 

Criminal Justice System (CJS): The set of processes established by 

governments to control crime and impose penalties on those who violate 

laws. 

Cost per Case: Explains the relationship between dispositions and cost. 

CourTools: Tools enable courts to assess the performance in meeting the 

needs and expectations of customers. 

Court: Government entity authorized to resolve legal disputes 

Continuances: Postponement of a legal proceeding to a later date, also 

known Adjournments. 

Case Flow Management System (CFMS):  The coordination of court 

processes to ensure timely disposition 

Complainant: The party who complains or sues; one who applies to the 

court for legal redress. Also known the plaintiff. 



XIV 

Civil Trials: The cases against another corporation or individual requesting 

the court award monetary damages. 

Cassation court: Located in the High Court, and appeals the judgments of 

Court of Appeal. 

Constitutional Court: A court deals primarily with constitutional law. 

Court of Appeal: Reviews what happened in the court below to determine 

whether any mistakes occurred. 

Commercial and Civil Trials Law (CCTL): The rules of litigation process 

in Civil cases in Palestine. 

Counter Cases: A legal case filed in response to another case. 

D 

Defendant: The person being sued. 

Dismissal: The termination of a lawsuit. 

Discovery: A pretrial stage of a court case, both sides collect and exchange 

information about the case and prepare for trial. 

Decision: Administrative and judicial determinations. Decision includes 

final judgments, rulings, and provisional orders made by court pending the 

outcome of the case. A decision is considered the initial step in a rendition 

by a court of a judgment in an action. 



XV 

Dockets: A list of cases to be heard by a court, also known Agendas or 

Calendar. 

E 

Efficiency: The ability to avoid wasting money, and time in producing a 

desired result. 

F 

Felonies: A crime of a graver nature than a misdemeanor, usually punishable 

by imprisonment in a penitentiary for more than a year and/or substantial 

fines. 

First Instance court: Reviews the cases that are not reviewed by Magistrate 

court and also the Felonies. 

H 

High Judicial Council (HJC): The head of Judiciary It specializes in 

instituting policies, supervising judges and organizing the work of the courts 

of all degrees which adjudicates cases before them. 

High Court (HC): The highest court in Palestine and consists of the 

Cassation court; Administrative court, and dealing with the judges-related 

issues such as the judge disputes regarding their job ranks. 

I 

Initial Appearance: is the first proceeding in front of a judge. 

Indictment: A written accusation charging a person with a crime. 



XVI 

Islah Men: Informal parties to restore oneself or to reconcile people with 

one another 

Intrinsic needs: Such as personal satisfaction due to self-fulfillment. But 

promotion, praise are Extrinsic needs. 

J 

Judicial Authority law (JAL): The laws of the Judicial Authority. 

Judiciary: The legal authority of a court to hear and decide a case. 

Judicial Support System (JSS): A department shares the judicial services 

with judges. 

Judgment: The final disposition of a lawsuit. 

M 

Magistrate court: A Court reviews some of Civil cases which are set in the 

Commercial and Civil Trials code, Misdemeanors, and offences. 

Ministry of Justice (MOJ): It plays its role in providing administrative and 

technical support to the courts and to the public prosecution. 

Misdemeanors: The Court of Common Pleas has jurisdiction over 

misdemeanor offenses generally punishable by a fine and/or a jail term. 

Musawah: The Palestinian Center for the independency of Judiciary and 

Legal Professions is a neutral, unpartisan and independent Palestinian civil 

society organization based in Ramallah and Gaza, Palestine. MUSAWA is 



XVII 

dedicated to defending the independence of the judiciary and the legal 

profession. 

N 

National Center for State Courts (NCSC): Is a non-profit 

organization charged with improving judicial administration in the United 

States and around the world 

P 

Penal Cases: Cases subject to punishment 

Penal Trials Law: The rules of litigation process in Penal cases in Palestine. 

Preliminary Hearing: The Court of Common Pleas has jurisdiction to hear 

preliminary hearings in felony matters to determine whether a defendant 

should be "bound over" for trial. This means that the judicial officer must 

believe there is sufficient evidence. 

 Plea: In a criminal proceeding, it is the defendant's declaration in open court 

that he or she is guilty or not guilty 

Pleadings: The written statements of fact and law filed by the parties to a 

lawsuit. 

Proceedings: Leal procedures from filing a case until disposition 

Public Prosecution: It specializes in instituting criminal proceeding in the 

name of the Palestinian people. 



XVIII 

Palestinian Judicial Institute (PJI): seeks performance improvement in 

coordination with High Judicial Council, Public Prosecution, and Ministry 

of Justice. 

Plan-Do-Check-Act (PDCA): The cycle of continuous improvement. 

Palestinian Bar Association (PBA): It guarantees the protection of people 

who resort to lawyers for legal services on the one hand and the protection 

of the interests of lawyers on the other hand 

S 

Systematic Sampling: is a random sampling technique. 

Statistical Package for the Social Sciences SPSS:  A software to analyze 

data. 

Stakeholders: All parties affect or affected by the court activities. 

Settlement: An agreement between the parties disposing of a lawsuit by a 

settlement judge. 

Sentencing: if the defendant enters a plea of guilty or is found guilty, the 

judicial officer determines the penalty or sentence to be imposed 

T 

Time to disposition: Time from filing a case until disposition, also known 

Lead Time. 



XIX 

Trial Date Certainty: The number of times cases disposed by trial are 

scheduled for trial. 

U 

United Nations Development Program (UNDP): is supporting 

governments in promoting transparency, integrity and accountability in the 

judiciary. 

V 

Verdict: A conclusion, as a fact or law that forms the basis for the court's 

judgment 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



XX 

Improving the Court's Performance in Palestine Concerning the Time 

spent until the case disposition 

By   

Darweesh Darweesh 

Supervisor 

 Dr. Mohammad Othman 

Abstract 

State of Palestine and the other countries all over the world are subjected to 

many serious obstructions which weaken the Judicial System to be trusted as 

the system of resolving disputes, this has been leading to worrying 

consequences such as the lack of people's trust in Justice System to protect 

his/her rights, so they may forego their entitlements, or take the law into their 

own hands with violence ensuing. The backlog cases problem due to the long 

time to disposition, which further diminishes the public's trust in the Judicial 

System was observed all over the world. The importance of this research is 

to provide better understanding of the current status of Palestinian Judicial 

System and its court's performance. Studying the backlog cases in Palestine 

to seek novel solutions to help in reducing the time to dispose the cases. This 

enables the Judicial System to be prevailed all over Palestine and to make it 

a trusted and fair mechanism to dispute resolution through highlighting and 

implementing the best strategies and practices to help in improving the 

efficiency of the Judicial System. The research assesses the current 

performance of the Palestinian Judicial System (PJS), this through the 

questionnaires to determine the satisfaction and evaluation of the main 

stakeholders within the Judicial System, and the exploratory interviews to 

collect data regarding the main factors which contribute to lengthening the 



XXI 

time to disposition, and also to identify the criteria of assessing the 

performance in terms of the way of managing the cases within the system 

and the low productivity which is result of working without standards. Also, 

the research proposes smart solutions and dashboards to help monitoring and 

controlling the performance, which is needed to apply the accountability in 

order to increase the efficiency which lead to better confidence in the judicial 

system. This research included the required data for the study to assess the 

performance of the judicial system, then suggesting the potential alternatives 

as solutions to be applied, this through the questionnaires and the statistical 

tools to analyze the data and extracting the results which are needed for the 

development, also the study covers the whole community of the study as 

possible to be able to achieve its objectives through satisfying its whole 

community, where it involves the Palestinian Judicial Institutions such as the 

HJC; the courts; and the individuals as litigants. The study provides a high 

quality monitoring tool on the performance of staff and the case disposition 

process. The reform helps in improving the performance in a continuous 

manner through measuring the following performance indicators according 

to "CourTools" which are provided by the NCSC: Access and Fairness; 

Clearance Rate (CR); Time to disposition; Age of active pending caseload; 

Trial date certainty; Court employee satisfaction; and Cost per case. The data 

gathering process was conducted within the courts of Hebron, Nablus, Jenin, 

Ramallah governorates to make a clear glance of the Judicial System. 

Regarding the case type models which help in predicting the time to 

disposition for each case type, the number of cases of each type which is 



XXII 

required to be as large as enough was collected following the systematic 

sampling technique in order to make the assessment and generate the results 

of the judicial system performance. For the measures Time to disposition; 

Clearance rate (CR); Age of pending cases; Trial date certainty, all cases 

were taken to measure these indicators. Regarding the evaluation of the 

stakeholders, the questionnaires were distributed within the court of Nablus 

only to assess the indicators which concerned with the satisfaction of the 

courts’ audience, this because the study of the stakeholders' evaluation is out 

of this research scope, where it was studied deeply by a previous research 

which are cited in this research. Since this research suggests using 

"CourTools", it was necessary to explain by examples how to use all of the 

applicable measures, so that the measures of evaluation were used in Nablus 

Court.  25 questionnaires were distributed to the attorneys (Accidental 

sampling) to evaluate the skills and knowledge of the judges in managing the 

cases efficiently, 25 questionnaires were distributed to the staff (As a whole) 

to evaluate their satisfaction in their positions and the legal works in the 

courthouse, the litigants of a number 50 (Accidental sampling) as the 

possible number of visitors within a typical day in Nablus court to evaluate 

their satisfaction regarding the way they are treated in the court in terms of 

Access and Fairness measure.  

 



1 

Chapter One 

Introduction 

Foreword 

This chapter provides an overview of this research areas where many aspects 

are investigated in order to evaluate the performance in Palestine’s Judicial 

System in order to study the problems in this system and try to treat them. 

1.1. Overview 

This research investigates the Judiciary in Palestine (also known as the 

Judicial System or Court System) which is the system of courts that interprets 

and applies the law in the name of the state. The Judiciary is a mechanism 

for disputes resolution (Fiseha, 2011). The study focuses on what is so-called 

Speedy trial which is a human right (Chattaraj, 2011). 

Palestinian Judicial System (PJS) pillars are Ministry of Justice (MOJ); High 

Judicial Council (HJC); and the Public Prosecution. Public Prosecutor enjoys 

full independence in performing its power, it specializes in instituting 

criminal proceeding in the name of the Palestinian people (Public 

Prosecution JAL. \ 83, 2005).  MOJ plays provides the administrative and 

technical support to courts and Public Prosecution, also it links the Executive 

Authority to HJC (Ministry of Justice JAL. \ 90-92, 2005). 

 

 

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Court
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_(polity)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_right


2 

High Judicial Council (HJC) is an independent entity, provides the legal 

framework for the organization of the judiciary, HJC has an authority over 

the judiciary, including authority over court administration, the appointment, 

selection, inspection, promotion and training of judges. HJC consists of the 

President of the High court as a president; the deputy of the High court 

president as a deputy; two judges from the High Court (HC), the presidents 

of the Appellate court in Jerusalem and Gaza governorates, the Public 

Prosecutor; and the under-secretary of justice (HJC Formation JAL. \ 36, 2005).  

The First Level courts consist of Magistrate; First Instance; Appellate; and 

the High court (Court Levels PCS. \ 7 & 23, 2001). First level Courts are 

Magistrate Court and Court of First Instance, Magistrate court reviews Civil 

cases valued below 10,000JD and Misdemeanors (Purview of Courts CCTL. \ 

39, 2005). Court of First Instance reviews Felonies and cases out of Magistrate 

court cases that mentioned above, and also appeals the judgments of 

Magistrate court (Purview of Courts CCTL. \ 41, 2001). Appellate Court 

appeals the judgments of First instance. The High Court consists of Court of 

Cassation to appeal the judgments of Appellate Court, and High Court of 

Justice dealing with the courts' administrative issues (Court Levels PCS. \ 7 

& 23, 2001) , see Figure 1.1.  



3 

 

Figure (1. 1): Levels of Courts in Palestine 

The importance of this research is highlighted from the significant prolonged 

time that the cases take until reaching the disposition, where this problem 

makes the courts system's suffers in terms of efficiency and effectiveness, 

where some deficiencies in the system such as the lack of using the full 

features of functionality of the technology which makes the system acts 

efficiently and effectively to reduce the time; deficiencies in judgments; and 

the weak performance of the staff and judges due to the scarce of education 

and training for them to enhance their knowledge and skills in the case 

management process.  

Case Flow management is the process of bringing the case from filing stage 

to the disposition stage (Agbonika & Alewo, 2014), the courts should pay all 

attention to this process in order to ensure the cases are disposed within the 

time standards. So the successful implementation of case management 

process should be applied to the Judicial System in Palestine in order to help 

the system and its staff and judges facilitating the services which are 

provided to the public; to ensure that the judges can manage their case load; 

and to ensure generating the high quality judgments in a timely manner 

(Abdelbaqi, 2010). 

High 

Court

Court of Appeal

First Level Courts



4 

The technology provides many uses which could help the Judicial System to 

develop its performance and achieve its goals, where the technology could 

provide the information and its exchange so fast where it is the main element 

in processing the judicial system's tasks and also to achieve the efficiency 

and effectiveness in the organizations. Also it may be used in the research 

and gathering data processes, the training sessions and education, the 

communications with other institutions and the citizens, the electronic 

services, and many applications which may help improving the performance 

and going with the Judicial System towards the superior success.  

The researcher seeks to investigate: To what extent the Judicial System 

monitor and control the performance in order to continuously improving the 

case management process of managing the cases? And to what extent the 

proceedings follow the best practices of doing things? 

The study explains the importance of disposing all cases within the standards 

to control the disposition process, where the delay haunts the administration 

of justice. Delays postpone the rectification of wrong; the vindication of the 

unjustly accused; and crowd the dockets of courts (Falavigna, Ippoliti, 

Manello, & Ramello, 2015). Possibilities for error increase rapidly as time 

elapses between the original fact and its judicial determination. So the facts 

should be determined and considered very quickly in order to generate the 

right judgment in a timely manner. 

The reality of the court's performance in Palestine and the obstructions that 

face the Judicial System should be taken into consideration in order to 

evaluate the current performance of the Palestinian Judicial System (PJS) 



5 

taking the late case disposition and the high load on the system in order to 

enhance the public trust in the system as a fair and easy way of resolving the 

disputes (Rummaneh, 2016). 

1.1.1. The Independency of Judiciary  

The independency of Judiciary should be maintained in order to apply justice 

in the community (Fiseha, 2011), where a lot of factors affect Judiciary to 

perform effectively which are: The  judicial job security: it means that the 

judges are protected from being suspended or dismissed unless the 

behavioral matters where this makes them unable to carry out their tasks; 

The selection process of judges; The financial independence: to prevent the 

influence of the other authorities on the judicial authority; The transfer of 

judges: many states protect the judges from the coercive transfer through 

giving the authority of transferring the judges only to the higher court. 

1.1.2. Counter Cases 

The Counter Cases increase the pressure on the PJS. This may refer to the 

weak performance of the Executive Authority in following up the complaints 

to validate its truthfulness (Refai, 2015). The experts see that the counter 

cases as a law phenomenon which occurs at a high rate in the Magistrate 

Courts, where the defendant makes a complaint against the complainant to 

blackmail him/her to relinquish his complaint or to lengthen the litigation 

time or even to evade from being jailed. 

Also, the Counter Complaints may occur due to the weak professionalism 

and credibility in the attorney profession (Barghouthi, 2015). This problem 



6 

requires the interplay of Courts; Public Prosecution and attorneys in order to 

reduce the rate of the counter complaints (Refai, 2015), where the Public 

Prosecution denied the shortcomings in its performance (Barrak, 2015). 

The Palestinian Board of Ministers (PBM) suggests a rule to eliminate the 

problem of counter cases, this rule increases the fees of litigation by 10 times 

(Adam, 2015), this could be useful in eliminating the counter cases but it 

negatively affects the right of accessing the justice, so the PBA had worked 

hardly to force the board to cancel the rule, the solution for the problem of 

the increasing number of the counter cases is by imposing fines on the 

litigants when the court reveals that their cases were counter cases, and this 

fine could be times the case value of money in order to act as a deterrence 

for the litigants who are revealed as fraudulent. 

1.1.3. The Settlement Judge in Civil Cases  

The judge who takes over the task of reconciling the adversaries as possible, 

he plays an important role in the Judicial System, where he/she is one of its 

pillars in spite of its absence in the Palestinian courts until now. The focus 

of his role in directing the adversaries to the judicial settlement and solving 

their disputes, where he works on obtaining the control on the case early to 

resolve it or providing the adversaries a chance to solve it through the ADR 

such as arbitration, rule (68) of the Palestinian code of CCTL of year 2001 

states the deputation one of the First Instance Court judges and to organize 

his sessions in the specialized court (Settlement Judge CCTL. \ 68, 2001), 

but this rule is not applied within Judiciary so far. 



7 

The case processed by the settlement judge takes the following forms of 

reconciliation: Complete reconciliation and formally documented by the 

court; Partial reconciliation and the unreconciled issues scheduled to be 

reviewed by the Trial Court; and No reconciliation which leads the case to 

be totally reviewed by the Trial Court. 

The role of this process has different effects on the Judiciary; Economy; and 

Society, where it relieves the high pressure on the Judiciary System, 

increases the confidence in the system and ensures the speedy case 

disposition (Hamarsheh & Khateeb, 2011). 

1.1.4. How Judges Are Chosen 

The selection process should follow a strict procedure in order to guarantee 

the best practices, where the judges are the tool of achieving the justice in 

the community and their verdicts affect the justice and (Driscoll & Nelson, 

2015). 

The selection of judges is critical to the process of litigation where the 

disposition of cases depends on the judge in managing the cases effectively, 

consequently this helps in reducing the case backlog which is the problem of 

this research. 

The judges should take Judicial Rehabilitation degree in order to provide 

them the judicial knowledge and skills, where the disposition of cases 

requires a very high skilled judge because the cases mostly are complex and 

have numerous aspects, or even controlling the procrastination of attorneys. 



8 

Presidents must consider many factors in making their choices for 

judgeships: Education; Experience; Skills; and Characteristics. 

1.1.5. Some Interests of the Research 

The research focuses on improving the judiciary's performance in terms of 

the efficiency, where it focuses on the speed of case disposition, also the 

research provides a tool for monitoring the whole system in order to ensure 

applying the responsibility; accountability and the continuous improvement. 

The research shows the importance of the Judicial Support System (JSS) and 

the performance indicators, which concern in saving the time and cost spent 

on the judicial sector, where these are effective tools to monitor the 

performance in order to highlight the deficiencies as a step to continuous 

improvement. 

The research shows the impact of personal impediments which are the weak 

competences of judges and staffs in terms of education and skills, also the 

desire of judges and staffs to perform according to the personal moods and 

the current proceedings. 

The research shows the impact of administrative impediments which are the 

non-allocation of a department for the developing and monitoring the used 

technology, the lack of a clear strategy to activate taking the benefits of 

technology, also the used policies and procedures which are not consistent 

with the information technology decade. 

The research shows the impact of technical impediment which is the lack of 

competences in dealing with technological techniques, the lack of flexibility 



9 

to develop the current technology, the lack of specified standards to be 

followed in developing the current performance. 

The research shows the importance of using mechanisms which lead to 

broaden the range of benefits of technology; linking the work-related 

institutions with the whole judicial system, activating the monitoring on the 

performance, allocating a dedicated department to monitor and develop the 

technology as needed, setting a clear strategy, planning for the training 

sessions in the fields of technological techniques and the case management 

techniques. Linking the new "Meezan" feature with cost per case measure 

and the judicial quality management system with the cost and time of 

litigation: The solution for the case backlog problem should be integrated of 

some areas such as the linking of "Meezan" with the management process, it 

should schedules the case queue and the judge to review the case considering 

the load of judge and also the mix of cases of different level of complexity, 

and also with the CR by judge in order to apply the motivation and 

accountability. As the JSS explains how the system helps in relieving the 

load of judges by delegating the works first to the Judicial Support in order 

to qualify the cases to be reviewed by judge, where these cases didn’t obtain 

a settlement between parties and/or all administrative issues are completely 

done. 

1.2. Statement of the problem 

The backlog cases problem is very critical to justice, governments and 

communities have to actively respond to this phenomena aiming at 



10 

minimizing the rate of backlog cases and raising the quality of judgments to 

reach the community justice (Mubarak, 2011). 

This research studies the current situation regarding the delays in the Judicial 

System. Many countries show a significant change in their Judicial System 

and many stayed with no positive movement towards the effectiveness 

(Dakolia, 1999).  

The courts suffer from the inefficient progress due to many factors which 

hinder the system from bringing the case into the disposition stage in a timely 

manner, this leads to decrease the public trust in the judicial system, and this 

is a dangerous result where the litigants would never choose the judicial 

system to resolve their disputes, but rather they would choose to resort to 

other informal mechanisms which may affect the justice. 

Palestine's court system suffers from the slow case disposition and as a result 

the backlog cases, where Palestine has an average of 30% of case disposition 

rate (Clearance Rate) in contrast with other countries of an average of 80%, 

this may be perceived as according to the caseload per judge yearly, but the 

Palestinian caseload per judge yearly is around 200 cases yearly which is 

very close to most of the caseload per judge around the world. Also the 

Palestinian court system suffers from the high age of cases, where 2726 Civil 

cases aged over 730 days and 2544 Felony cases aged over 365 days.  

The courts should be well managed in order to be able to deal with the case 

load, when the court is well managed through the performance indicators 

such as the time to disposition and age of pending cases and other useful 



11 

measures, the court can eliminate the effect of factors that lengthen the time 

to disposition. 

The slow court system leads to a weak applying of the community justice. The 

governments focus on improving the Judicial Sector in order to ensure applying 

the justice (Chih-Fong & Jung-Hsiang, 2010). The Court System should 

continuously monitor several areas which have critical effects on the system: 

the Commercial and Civil Trials Law (CCTL) and supporting performance 

indicators; the capacity and skills of judges and staff (Mubarak, 2011). 

The citizens resort to the court system in order to bring back their 

entitlements, but they need their entitlements in a timely manner where if 

justice is delayed the justice is denied (Chattaraj, 2011).   

The laws of civil trials contribute to the problem of backlog cases where the 

time to disposition is highly affected by the number of postponements in any 

case, this would lengthen the waiting time until disposition. These laws 

should smooth the litigation process but without affecting the speedy trial. 

The Palestinian commercial and civil trials law states that the postponement 

twice for the same reason is forbidden (Postponement CCTL. \ 121, 2001). 

But the courts don't adhere to this rule and the process of postponement 

would last for much longer, especially when the plaintiff relies on the 

allowances of since he/she is the claimant in the case, this because the judge 

tends to postpone the case when the plaintiff doesn't attend the session. This 

would affect the justice and the trust in the judicial system.  



12 

1.3. Importance of the Research  

The importance of this research is to assess the Judicial System and the 

factors affecting the time to disposition, focusing on the backlog cases 

problem as a result of the long time to disposition in order to propose a 

framework which suggests an effective way of managing the backlog cases. 

The effective Judicial System is the system that deals with the high rate of 

cases filing and also applies time standards on the processes in order to 

control the performance to done in a timely manner, which guarantees the 

speedy trial for the litigants. This helps in applying the accountability to 

monitor the performance of the judges and staff (Buscaglia & Ulen, 1997). 

Time spent until disposition can be measured but the other aspects which 

concerned with the quality of judgments are more difficult to be measured. 

When working on reducing the delay of the litigation process it is very 

important to not affect the judgment quality to ensure achieving the justice. 

Time standards limit the time spent in processing the cases in order to ensure 

the time to disposition would never exceed the time standards, but as 

mentioned without affecting the quality negatively, so the process of 

litigation should follow and guarantee the just treatment for all litigants and 

also the quick process to obtain the disposition as quick as possible 

(Antonucci, Crocetta, & D’Ovidio, 2014). 

This research explains the effects of some factors on the time to disposition 

such as the notifications process, this through analyzing the data for the 

sample taken to study the relationships between the factors and the time to 

disposition. This helps in predicting the time to disposition and also the 



13 

backlog cases through the case type models, the research suggests 

performance indicators to monitor and control the procedures taken to bring 

the cases from filing to disposition stage. 

The research uses exploratory interviews to identify the main factors of delay 

in case disposition, these factors help in predicting the time to disposition or 

to study the relationships between these factors and time to disposition. The 

measures of satisfaction and evaluation are tools to gauge the extent to which 

court-users are satisfied, these measures are just to illustrate the way of using 

these measures where the satisfaction assessment is not in this research 

scope. The data collected for the factors affecting time to disposition were 

collected through "Meezan" which is the court system database, where the 

cases sample was 383 randomly selected from 68890 cases of different types, 

this sample was used to generate representative models for the contributions 

of identified factors in delaying the disposition of these cases. The data for 

case type models and for satisfaction measures were analyzed by SPSS. 

1.4. Objectives of the Research 

Current research aims to achieve the following objectives: 

1) To highlight the main factors of lengthening the time to disposition. 

2) To highlight the additional required features of technology needed to 

be integrated to the current used system. 

3) To generate a new model to monitor and control the pressure on the 

Judicial System. 

4) To implement the key Performance Indicators. 



14 

5) To explain the role of Judicial Support in Case Flow Management.   

1.5. Questions of the Research 

Current research will try to answer the following questions: 

1. What are the main factors of the prolonged time taken to dispose the 

cases? 

2. What is the role of added technological features in managing the 

cases efficiently? 

3. What are the potential solutions to improve the performance? 

4. How to implement and monitor the performance indicators? 

5. What is the role of Judicial Support in an effective Case Flow 

Management system? 

1.6. Limitations of the Research 

The research considers only the West Bank courts due to the difficulty to 

take any data from Gaza strip to analyze the situation there, and only the First 

Instance and Magistrate courts. The research focuses only on the speed case 

disposition aspect, but the quality of verdicts which contributes highly in the 

ineffective litigation process is out of this research scope. 

 

 

 

 



15 

Chapter Two 

Literature review 

Foreword 

This chapter reviews the past studies on Judiciary in order to improve the 

Judiciary performance through clarifying the problems that the judicial 

system suffers from; and the reforms and developmental projects that have 

been conducted to treat the elements that hinder the justice in protecting the 

entitlements of citizens.  

2.1. Historical overview 

The shortage of the court's staff and judges is not the major problem which 

leads to prolonged time to disposition, but there are many factors that 

contribute to this problem. The slow litigation process and the low quality 

judgments taken by judges lead to increase the number of backlog cases and 

the pressure on courts. So the Judicial System should implement mechanisms 

in order to monitor and control the performance (Spigelman, 2006). 

2.1.1. Judicial System Reform in Italy 

The inefficient court system affect the economic sustainability (Lanau, 

2014), where the citizens need their entitlements such as the properties and 

money to be back as soon as possible, this ensures the continuous rotation of 

economic wheel due to the improved business climate. This inefficiency 

might be due to the low court fees which increases the case flow into the 

court system, this may contribute to higher age of active pending cases. Also 



16 

the lengthy and complex proceedings lead to prolonged time until 

disposition.  

2.1.2. Does Court Efficiency have a Deterrent Effect on Crime – Costa 

Rica - 2010 

A study in Costa Rica investigates the relationship between the court of 

efficiency and the crime rates, this through studying the clearance rate of 

First Instance courts for the period 2001-2007. The main findings are that an 

increase in one percentage point of the court efficiency rate can reduce the 

number of crimes between 14 and 17 percent (Soares & Sviatchi, 2010). 

When the court efficiency increases the time elapsed between the case filing 

and case disposition decreases, which forms an effective deterrence against 

crimes. The paper suggests that one-year delay can increase the number of 

thefts and robberies in about 18 and 23 respectively. 

2.1.3. Congestion and Delay in the Court System in Asia's Courts - 1985 

A comparative study about the congestion and delay in the court system in 

Asia's courts were conducted in order to identify the factors that increase 

delay in the system, also the paper suggested strategies to reduce the backlog 

cases and to satisfy the litigants' needs. The author noticed that the factors of 

backlog cases as well as the tools of relieving the problem may differ from 

country to another because of their different conditions (Falt, 1985). Some 

of the factors that were pointed out by the author are: Shortage of judges and 

staffs; the training of judges on the skills of managing the caseload; 

monitoring the performance, applying the accountability, long proceedings. 



17 

Some of solutions were suggested by the author such as the effective pre-

trial proceedings to schedule only the qualified cases for judicial reviewing; 

and monitoring the unnecessary delays. 

2.1.4. Delay and Settlement in Litigation - 1999 

The delays in litigation were investigated in a paper that studied the causes 

of these delays in the court system, the author pointed out that delays affect 

the litigants and the community, where it may affect the cost on both the 

litigants and society, and also delay bringing back entitlements of litigants 

(Fenn & Rickman, 1999). 

2.1.5. A Study on Delay in the Disposal of Civil Litigation – 2013 

Some factors that contribute to delays in the court system were identified in 

a paper conducted in Bangladesh in 2013, these factors are the continuous 

postponements which should be limited to serious reasons; the pre-trial 

procedures that relieve the caseload through dropping the unqualified cases 

to be scheduled; the skills of judges in order to manage the cases efficiently; 

scheduling of cases within the system considering the age of cases; laws have 

to be moderate to ensure the flexibility but not delays; monitoring the 

performance of judicial system and the accountability (Chowdhury, 2013). 

2.1.6. Court Performance Indicators 

"CourTools" are useful indicators providing interpretable results both for 

internal management and performance assessment by a broad audience of 

litigants, attorneys, policymakers (Tools for Court Success. NCSC, 2016). 



18 

So "CourTools" enable courts to collect and present evidence of their success 

in meeting the needs and expectations of customers. The court should 

implement the performance indicators and make it the policy to bring the 

current status towards the excellence in providing the services in a timely 

and high quality manner. With performance indicators in place, judges and 

court managers can gauge how well the court is achieving basic goals, such 

as Access and Fairness in the provided services, Timeliness, and managerial 

effectiveness. 

Five reasons to assess court performance: Performance evaluation helps 

citizens understand exactly how things get done in the court; The capacity to 

identify and focus on areas of greatest importance to a broad and diverse 

audience; Help staff better understand their individual contributions and 

empower court staff to devise creative means to achieve the desired outcome; 

Information on how well the court is doing in different work areas provides 

essential indicators of whether goals are reasonably being achieved; 

Efficiency (Doing things right) and Effectiveness (Doing the right thing) in 

the expenditure of court funds (Tools for Court Success. NCSC, 2016). 

The court performance indicators are: Access and Fairness for citizens' 

satisfaction; Clearance Rate, Time to Disposition; Age of Pending Caseload; 

Trial Date Certainty; Employees / Attorneys / Judges Satisfaction; and Cost 

per Case. The HJC should commit and take the responsibility to implement 

the courts performance indicators, it should monitor the implementation 

process in order to ensure that the indicators are successfully implemented. 

HJC should develop a plan to monitor and control the court performance 



19 

indicators, the Council should continuously supervise the indicators to 

highlight the deficiencies in order to make the required modifications (Tools 

for Court Success. NCSC, 2016). 

2.1.7. Court Performance around the World 

An effective, accessible Justice System should provide justice and fairness 

to litigants with reasonable cost and speed. One of the major challenges is 

that the "output" of the legal system is not easy to quantify, and it is equally 

difficult to balance "Efficiency" against qualitative objectives such as 

"Justice" (Dakolia, 1999).  

Chilean courts have the highest workload (Dakolia, 1999), reporting over 

5,000 cases per year per judge. In contrast, German judges receive only 176 

cases per year, Hungarian judges about 226, and French judges about 277. 

The average number of cases per state court judge in the United States by 

comparison is 1,300 cases. This is comparable to the survey's average of 

1,400. Even as compared to the United States, France, Hungary, and 

Germany have far fewer cases per year per judge than the other countries 

surveyed.  

The number of cases filed, however, does not seem to affect the CR; Chile 

has an impressive CR (CR is cases resolved/ cases filed) despite the high 

filed cases per judge see Figure 2.1. As mentioned before, the speedy trial 

and the high rate of case disposition mustn't affect the quality of justice. The 

Congestion Rate (CGR) is the caseload divided by resolved cases, given the 

productivity of a court the CGR can be determined in order to know how 



20 

much time this court needs to dispose its caseload see Figure 2.1. Ecuador 

needs 10 years to dispose its caseload while Singapore needs 1 year only 

(Dakolia, 1999). 

One study in the United States shows that fast and slow courts have similar 

numbers of cases filed per judge. Indeed, it has been found that, in some 

courts, an increase in filed cases causes the courts to internally adapt to the 

change to maintain its rate of case resolution. If the courts are well-managed, 

the increase in filings may even result in cases being resolved more quickly 

(Dakolia, 1999).  

 
Figure (2. 1): Clearance rate of courts around the world (Dakolia, 1999) 

Also, the need to exchange information between courts to see what factors 

were successful in creating more efficient courts. Comparisons may also 

stimulate healthy competition between courts (Dakolia, 1999), one of the 

important roles it has assumed is the collection of empirical data. Without 

such information exchanged between courts to benefit from the experiences 

of other courts, reformers end up working in isolation, without benefiting 

from the experience of other reformers, and not knowing how other systems 



21 

resolve similar problems in the areas such as time to disposition and the 

backlog case problem. With the availability of previous successful reforms 

information, judicial reform projects financed by such organizations will 

benefit in both design and evaluation (Dakolia, 1999). 

In contrast, Palestine's courts have a very low filed cases per judge in 

comparison with the countries over the world see Table 2.1, despite of this 

low value Palestine has a very low value of CR. According to the data shown 

in Table 2.1, Palestine's courts need a reform to be implemented within the 

Judicial Sector in order to treat the low performance, and this through a 

monitoring system and models that can be used to monitor and control the 

system, this is the concern of this paper which investigates the current system 

to highlight the main causes of this low performance, and consequently 

implementing the tools which help in improving the way of managing the 

cases within the courts. 

Table (2. 1):Comparison of CR around the world (Dakolia, 1999) 

Country 
Number of filed cases  

(Cases/Judge/Year) 
CR 

Chile 5000 93% 

Germany 176 98% 

Hungarian 226 79% 

France 277 110% 

Palestine 271 30% 

 



22 

Information on court performance can assist in promoting greater confidence 

in Judiciary and promote good governance through transparency and 

accountability. The process of good governance should ensure greater 

respect for the rule of law, confidence in the judiciary, and legal protection 

of individual rights. 

2.1.8. Use of Data in Performance Measurement in Chicago-USA-2013 

As mentioned the court performance is difficult to measure. This is because 

quantifying the outputs that we expect courts to produce is complicated, we 

can easily count case dispositions, but appraising the quality of justice is 

more subjective. Early attempts to implement performance measures in state 

courts "CourTools" which are a comprehensive set of performance measures 

created by the NCSC (Welter, 2013). 

New Jersey’s state court system applied the performance indicators in order 

to reduce case backlog between 1992 and 2006, the state reduced backlog by 

50,000 cases. These indicators are to provide a dashboard which explains the 

courts’ performance, but it needs to be linked with incentives to be more 

effective, where the judges should be followed to ensure the speedy trial for 

litigants (Welter, 2013). 

The Criminal Division of the Cook County Circuit Court ("Court") 

developed a new digital case management system where each day, judges 

receive a printout of cases currently on their docket. This “court sheet” gives 

them some very valuable information. It tells them what the first charge was 

in the case, the first date on the docket, the status of the case, and the next 



23 

scheduled court date. This will force the judges to effectively manage the 

cases (Welter, 2013). 

The challenge in these reforms is to achieve the alignment of the speedy trial 

with the high quality judgment. The researches argued that some of the main 

drivers of delay are the lack of attorney preparedness, unwillingness of 

parties to share evidence, the absence of a assured trial date, and the 

"continuance culture" within the court which allows for continuous 

postponements, the following are the components of the court performance 

programs (Welter, 2013): Measures and Goals to be followed as the standard; 

Compatible Systems: Ideal IT systems; Uniform Data: to ensure consistency; 

Incentives: to provide a highly effective management tool; Coordination & 

Communication. 

2.1.9. Case Flow Management Process 

The case flow management is a set of activities that bring the case from the 

registering stage into the case disposition stage, these activities should ensure 

getting the cases disposed in a timely manner (Sallmann, 1995). 

Judicial System has a list of proceedings must be followed in order to process 

a case, these proceedings differ according to the case type, Civil cases start 

from registering the case, passing through many procedures inside and 

outside the court, and ending by the case disposition. The proceedings of 

Penal cases usually start by investigation; arresting suspects; passing through 

the Prosecution and end by disposition see Figure 2.2 for the penal cases that 



24 

start by arresting suspects, where the core of this research is the proceedings 

within the court system (Sallmann, 1995). 

The proceedings are almost similar around the world, but the difference is in 

the way that the Judiciary or courts manage their caseload until reaching the 

disposition. 

 

Figure (2. 2): The Proceedings-a Penal Case starts by Arrest (Sallmann, 1995)   

The courts need to monitor and control the progress of cases through 

focusing on the case flow management approach, this ensures processing the 

cases without any unnecessary delays, the factors related to the case flow 

management processes that may lengthen the time to disposition are easier 

Arrest

Initial appearance - Charging 
evidences

(Suspect's name and charges)

(24 hrs)

Charging - Evidence

(10-20 days)

Preliminary hearing

(Public minitrial)

Arraignment

(Not guilty plea)

Discovery

Non trial disposition

(Plea aggrement or 
Dismissal)

Trial

Sentencing

Execution

Appeal

New trial Verdict

Indictement



25 

to control than external factors, when these factors are controlled the 

performance of the Judicial System increases dramatically (Sallmann, 1995).  

2.1.10. Measuring Court Performance-Hong Kong Court of Final 

Appeal - 2006 

Court performance indicators are useful tools to monitor the system which is 

required to apply the accountability, but the citizens who resort to courts 

need the justice that is aligned with speedy trial, they don't only the speed to 

be satisfied (Spigelman, 2006). The quality is difficult to be measured in 

order to ensure the justice, so when working on expediting the performance 

of case litigation process, we have to ensure that the justice is not negatively 

affected. 

2.1.11. Palestinians' Evaluation of Justice Institutions – UNDP - 2012   

A survey was conducted in order to notice the extent to which the 

Palestinians resort to courts, as well as the extent to which they trust the 

Justice Institutions. In case of one doesn't trust justice to protect his/her 

rights, they may forego their entitlements, or take the law into their own 

hands, with violence ensuing. 71% of the Palestinians resort to courts to 

resolve disputes; 51.2% are confident with fair settlements generated 

through the courts (Adwan, 2012). The people's perception that justice is too 

slow is the reason for avoiding recourse to courts. 50.2% of people cited 

‘court cases take too long’ chose not to resort to courts (Adwan, 2012). 

23.3% of Palestinians perceive that the ‘informal’ justice mechanisms are 

faster than courts, but the informal justice mechanisms such as "Islah men" 



26 

tend to deny the rights of marginalized groups (Adwan, 2012). Legal literacy 

is the gateway to accessing rule of law institutions and achieving justice. 

‘Legally illiterate’ persons are less likely to access justice. Legal literacy can 

be a factor to improve performance. (Adwan, 2012). 

2.1.12. Administration of Criminal Justice in Palestine – 2010 

The backlog problem in Palestinian justice system was assessed in a book 

conducted in 2010, this book investigates the delay in civil and criminal 

cases. Where Palestinian courts are unable to dispose cases within time 

standards, which lead to accumulation of cases due to filings continuously 

exceed dispositions, the case flow management was pointed out as proactive 

proceedings to expedite case disposition, and this ensures filings almost 

equal dispositions, which means high clearance rate "ratio of dispositions to 

filings" (Abdelbaqi, 2010).  

Judicial systems face challenges in rendering judgments within rational time, 

where the public satisfaction and confidence in judicial system is crucial to 

justice. European convention on human rights considers case delay as a 

violation of human rights. The author mentioned that delay might affect 

rendering a fair judgment, where the ability to confine the entire details for 

evaluation and making a fair judgment decreases as the time of processing a 

case increases (Abdelbaqi, 2010). 

The author listed the basic causes for delay which are congestion in courts' 

dockets; the obsolete procedures that permit excessive continuances; 

distribution of cases per judge without considering the number of judges in 



27 

relative to size of population; political situations which hinder the judicial 

system's parties attending court sessions. The case management system was 

pointed out as an effective mechanism to reduce time to disposition and cost 

of litigation; apply accountability; provides transparency. This helps courts 

monitoring the performance of staff and judges. The author reviews the 

American case management system which includes the standard forms to 

ensure uniformity of data and minimum errors; record control from filing a 

case until folder creation; case processing through the system; scheduling the 

cases according to complexity; controlling and storing judgments; and 

reporting some statistics such as number of filings and dispositions during a 

certain period, pending cases at the beginning and end of the period 

(Abdelbaqi, 2010). 

The author discussed the case delay in German judicial system as faster than 

its counterparts worldwide in time to disposition, where average time in 1995 

in local courts was 6.7 months, whereas in 1996 was 5 months. Case delay 

in Palestine in First Instance courts in 2006 was also investigated, where the 

percentage of cases disposed was 47% (57334 cases) of overall cases filed 

and recycled. Moreover, the author discussed a project conducted in 

Palestinian courts by UNDP in 2003 (DPK Consulting Project), this project 

studied the factors of delay throughout the various steps in litigation process 

(four prototypes courts were considered), the postponements due to litigants' 

requests which is the largest contribution of 42% of the overall delay, and 

because the judge seeks relaxation he/she accepts their requests, the 

improper notifications of 11% contribution to overall delay, this is due to 



28 

checkpoints which hinder bailiffs from successfully notifying the intended 

parties. The project suggested two mechanisms, the first is to deal with old 

cases through classifying them in order to provide them priority, the second 

is to speed up the litigation process through imposing some procedures such 

as forcing litigants to present evidences in the first session; postponement is 

forbidden for the same reason; treating plaintiff or his attorney as the 

defendant so dropping the case due to nonattendance; and transferring 

scheduled cases to other judges due to judge's absence (Abdelbaqi, 2010). 

2.1.13. Musawah Evaluation Report for the Justice sector in Palestine 

A surveying study was conducted in 2015 in order to evaluate the justice 

sector in Palestine (West Bank and Gaza Stripe), this is through the 

questionnaires distributed over a sample from the audience. These 

questionnaires investigate the opinions of audience in the justice indicators 

which were set by Musawah in 2007, where the justice pillars and their 

indicators were identified. The targeted groups were the Palestinian 

audience; Litigants; Lawyers; Trainees lawyers; Law Instructors in 

Palestinian Universities (Musawah, 2015). The following Table 2.2 shows 

the results of the study. 

 

 

 



29 

Table (2. 2):  Results of Musawah Evaluation Report – Litigants Group 

in West Bank 
Aspect Percentage of "Yes" plea 

1. Improvement in the Palestinian 

Judiciary 

36% 

2. Integrity of Judiciary 51% 

3. Slow Case Disposition 71% 

4. Security Institutions Intervention 85% 

5. Trust in Trial Courts 38% 

6. Fair Trial 48% 

 

These results are worrying indicators where the litigants of high percentage 

noticed that the judiciary is not speedy and fair enough to be a trusted 

mechanism of resolving disputes, this is very clear from the percentage of 

litigants that trust the tribal judiciary which is 48%, 53% see that the tribal 

judiciary is more able than trial courts to resolve disputes. The lawyers of 

52% don't believe in the integrity of judiciary, also 54% see the system of 

appointment doesn't follow the transparency, where 58% think that the 

system follows some biased considerations in the promotions and 

appointment processes (Musawah, 2015).  

The slow and unfair litigation processes lead to decrease the trust in the 

Judiciary System, which means that people would choose recourse to 

informal mechanisms such as the tribal judiciary. Consequently, the justice 

wouldn't prevail in the whole community.    

2.1.14. The Judge Effort Spent Working on Cases 

A study was conducted by a specialized team from the HJC and international 

experts showed that the judge in the Palestinian courts performs 



30 

approximately 1400 hours of judicial work yearly, and this through 

determining the daily judge working hours in the court which is around 7 

hours a day (Dabbas, 2014), where the official daily hours are 7 hours, the 

monthly working days are 22 days, after cutting the yearly judicial vacation 

84 days, but the judge actually doesn't adhere to these official rules and 

works only around 3 to 4 hours daily. Table 2.3 provides an accurate timeline 

for the number of judicial hours required for each case type in the Magistrate 

and First Instance courts (Civil and Penal) if the required papers and persons 

are available.  

Table (2. 3): Judicial hours required for several case types (Dabbas, 2014) 

Type Hours 

Murder cases 37 

<100,000 JD 31.5 

Misdemeanor 2 

Accident 

Compensation 

6 

The following formula is to determine the number of judges needed to be 

available in each court (Dabbas, 2014). 

 

𝑁𝑢𝑚𝑏𝑒𝑟 𝑜𝑓 𝑗𝑢𝑑𝑔𝑒𝑠 =
𝑆𝑢𝑚 𝑜𝑓 𝑗𝑢𝑑𝑖𝑐𝑖𝑎𝑙 𝑤𝑜𝑟𝑘 ℎ𝑜𝑢𝑟𝑠

1400
 

2.1.15. The Notifications are the Basis of Judicial Fulfilment 

The Judicial Notification is a technique to communicate with the procedural 

parties of the judicial work, where it is a formal announcement for the start 

of litigation with a specified time which notify the other party to attend for a 



31 

pre-assigned court session in a particular date to start the required 

precautions to defend his right in confronting the adversary.  

The legislator sets out the notification methods according to rule (7) as 

follows (Notifications Methods CCTL. \ 7, 2001): By the notifications 

officer; by the post office; any other methods the court suggests; If the 

address of person the court needs to notify lies in another court, the judicial 

notification should be sent to this court registry to undertake the notification 

process, then sending a report to the source court explaining the details and 

procedures which were done throughout the process (Awwad, 2014). 

The important role of the notification process enforces a special attention to 

be processed successfully (Awwad, 2014). The non-completion of this 

process is a major obstacle to apply justice. A lot of cases are postponed due 

to the incomplete notification process. Table 2.4 shows the statistics issued 

by IT department information in the HJC for the year 2013, we see varying 

proportions with respect to the obstructions of the notification process 

(Awwad, 2014): 

Table (2. 4): The rotatory cases because of the failure of notification 

process in 2013 (Awwad, 2014) 

# Cause of postponement Rotatory cases 

1 Failure to notify the parties the session date 2264 

2 Re-notify any of parties 15789 

3 Failure to notify the witnesses the session date 62 

4 Failure to notify the appellant 309 

5 Failure to notify the appellee 140 

 



32 

There is no doubt that the greater the proportion of the disposition of cases 

the greater the public confidence in the Judiciary. Several factors have the 

greatest impact in completing the notification process as it may separately or 

jointly form a real obstacle to the informer to do his job to notify, these 

factors are: Technical factors; The nature of the work; Geographical factors; 

Personal factors; Logistic factors; Legal factors (Awwad, 2014).  

2.1.16. Expediting Case Litigation Process through Setting Life Spans 

In 2014 a project to expedite the court's cases through specifying its life span 

(Dabbas, 2014), This developmental project was performed by the HJC 

because of the significant increasing in the registered cases in the courts 

which may reach to 20% annual increase especially in the Court of First 

Instance and Magistrate Courts, because the litigation process takes too long 

and much further than it should take until the disposition of cases, this 

contributes to the accumulated number of cases which is the result of the 

increasing of judicial load on courts in comparison with the human capabilities 

whether judges or staff members. This project was applied through the 

electronic program to manage the processing of cases "Mezaan " to make the 

judges able to manage the cases (Dabbas, 2014). 

2.1.17. The Evolution of Court's Information System in Palestine 

The Judicial System Institutions worked on reforms in order to improve the 

performance of the Judicial System, these projects contributed in improving 

the performance in the years before 2009, where ''Mezzan'' software was 

applied in 2009 and it is currently used in the justice sector ["Mezzan" is an 

electronic software to manage the progress of Civil and Penal cases and all 



33 

related procedures once it is registered until disposition] but it helps the 

system as a data base but not as an effective case management tool to ensure 

the good quality judgment in a short time, where it helps in accessing the 

information about the cases progress within the court system such as 

notifications to parties (Rummaneh, 2016). 

The used technology in the Judicial System and its courts has evolved 

through several stages (Rummaneh, 2016) : 

1- The stage before ''Mezzan" 

The system was using the traditional way to archive and retrieve the 

information manually, but the system suffers from the ineffectiveness in 

terms of the speed and the accuracy of data to be accessible to all parties. 

2- ''Mezzan'' 

''Mezzan 1'' was resulted from the efforts of the HJC which worked in 

identifying the priorities and the security levels to guarantee the ability 

to save the information, it was generated as a phase 1 which only works 

on registering the cases electronically and its notifications in the 

Magistrate Courts. 

In phase 2, the council developed the software to work in the courts of 

its various specializations, to deal with the all kind of cases and its 

procedures such as registering, notifications and reports, and printing the 

hearing files electronically. The system still lacks of connection with the 

related parties and the directorates of the Judicial System. Also the new 

system helped in reducing to some extent the Judicial Congestion and in 

speeding up the case proceedings. 



34 

In phase 3, the Council developed a new version of the case management 

software (Mezzan 2) to modify the problems of the first release    

(Mezzan 1), the new release of "Meezan 2" provides exchanging 

information between the related Institutions such as the Public 

Prosecution to exchange the information of Penal cases such as the 

information of case parties; the PBA to exchange the information of  

registered lawyers, and the MOJ to exchange the rules of penal for the 

interest of the central criminal folder. 

3- The current performance 

The courthouses now use ''Mezzan 2'' in all their daily procedures to 

record all proceedings information to ensure the accuracy in the case 

proceedings, and it provides the lawyers the feature of following up their 

cases remotely, and providing the HJC the feature of generating the 

statistical reports regarding the cases and their types, hearings, and the 

postponement reasons in order to improve the effectiveness. 

The current situation is better than ever where ''Mezzan'' facilitates handling 

the cases through functioning as a central data base where it provides details 

about the case progress, but the Court System is still ineffective in terms of 

the backlog, the speed, and the quality of judgments (Rummaneh, 2016).    

The research assumes that the success in implementing the new tools 

requires the commitment of the HJC to link the suggestions of this research 

with the strategic goals of the Judicial System. This study investigates the 

problem of long time to disposition which leads to the backlog case problem, 

this research studies the factors that lead to these results in order to improve 



35 

the performance of PJS to act efficiently. The research uses the tools that the 

literature used for monitoring the performance of courts, these tools are 

useful for this research in collecting; analyzing and interpreting the results 

regarding the factors affecting the time to disposition. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



36 

Chapter Three 

Research Methodology 

Foreword 

This chapter explains the study approach and its range and shows the study 

community and the sampling techniques and the sample size, and also the 

statistical tools used to investigate the causes. 

3.1. Study Approach 

The research considers multiple approaches in order to explain and 

investigate the reasons of case backlog due to the long time to disposition, 

this is also required to be compatible with the research purpose, the problem 

area, research questions, and research hypotheses which satisfies the research’s 

requirements in order to reach the desired results (Creswell, 2003). 

This research uses an inductive approach in order to move from data to 

theory (Blackstone, 2012). This research used the inductive approach in 

generating models from data that are very helpful in predicting the time to 

disposition and predicting the upcoming caseload. And using the deductive 

approach to start with a theory which is the standards of time to disposition 

to check the compliance to these standards and then test its implications with 

data. A deductive approach in research is to study what others have done, 

reads existing theories, and then tests hypotheses that emerge from those 

theories. (Blackstone, 2012). 



37 

A quantitative approach is one in which the investigator primarily uses for 

developing knowledge (i.e., cause and effect thinking, reduction to specific 

variables and hypotheses and questions, use of measurement and 

observation, and the test of theories) (Creswell, 2003). The data collection 

also involves gathering both numeric information (e.g., on instruments) as 

well as text information (e.g., on interviews), so that the collected 

information represents both quantitative and qualitative information. 

For identifying factors that influence an outcome, a quantitative approach 

was used to know the important variables to examine (Creswell, 2003). The 

research uses the qualitative approach to understand the research problem 

through the exploratory interviews to evaluate the status of the judicial 

system, this provides a clear picture of the current performance and the 

impact of this weak performance, this impact affects the citizens and the staff.  

Also, the study uses the tools needed to highlight the factors of the backlog 

problem. The research uses tools to quantitatively measure the performance 

of several areas in case management system where this approach was used 

to test the hypotheses through collecting quantitative data for the key 

performance indicators and the statistics were used to generate the 

correlations between variables. This resulted in connecting the results with 

research problem and research questions, the exploratory interviews are 

adopted in order to collect data and understand the conformance to the 

standards which control the time to disposition. 

So, this research investigates the factors that affect the time to disposition in 

order to identify them; the data for these factors was collected and analyzed 



38 

by SPSS. The assessment of current Palestinian Courts performance was in 

Nablus, Hebron, Jenin, and Ramallah courts which represent the research 

community and considers only the Magistrate and First Instance courts and 

their performance in terms of the disposition time and other measures during 

the period 2013-2015. 

3.2. Research Framework 

The research assesses the current performance regarding the factors which 

lengthen the time to disposition, and suggest a model to provide the ability 

to monitor and control the performance and also to link these performance 

indicators with the system of motivation. 

The following Figure 3.1 explains the research framework which was 

followed to assess the current performance of Palestinian courts which was 

needed to identify the research problem, Nablus, Hebron, Jenin, and 

Ramallah courts represent the research community and considers only the 

Magistrate and First Instance courts and their performance in terms of the 

disposition time and other measures during the period 2013-2015. The 

samples in several areas were chosen to represent the community, these areas 

are the satisfaction of employees, the evaluation of judges and lawyers, and 

the performance indicators which were used to highlight the research 

problem, the exploratory interviews were conducted in order to identify the 

factors that lengthen the time to disposition, the standards of time to 

disposition that are considered by the literature were used to set the research 

hypotheses, the questionnaires were conducted to evaluate the employees 



39 

satisfaction, and the evaluation of judges and lawyers (It was mentioned that 

the evaluation measures are just to explain how to be used), these areas 

generated the factors which lengthen the time to disposition. These 

questionnaires were undergone to a Pilot study to ensure the questions are 

valid and easy to answer, these questionnaires were distributed to the 

targeted groups and were gathered to be analyzed by SPSS. 

The results of the interviews were used to conduct the factors which lengthen 

the time to disposition, and also to test the compliance to the previous 

hypotheses as the standards to time to disposition, and to check the validity 

of the research hypotheses. 

The study proposes a model which helps in reducing the load and time which 

must be done by the judges, and also the cost the courts spend in running the 

business of courts, the proposed performance indicators should be followed 

in order to monitor and control the performance to achieve the excellence. 

The quantitative and qualitative methods were used in order to highlight the 

areas of poor performance and to propose the novel solution which is the 

performance indicators. 

 



40 

 
Figure (3. 1): Research framework 

3.3. The sampling 
 

The accidental sampling method was used for the questionnaires because the 

community is not known where the number of citizens and lawyers that visit 

the court cannot be determined. Since the scope of this study is to discuss the 

reasons for the backlog in order to find the ways of reducing the time to 

disposition, which is conducted by the data collected from the databases of 

the HJC. So the study community of the questionnaires is Nablus court only 

in its Magistrate and First Instance courts. 

3.3.1. The Research Community 

The study community regarding the data collected about the caseload of 

courts is composed of Hebron, Nablus, Jenin, and Ramallah courts and their 

Problem

•Identify the research problem

•Determine the research objectives

Literature 
review

•Reviewing the previous researches and projects 

Data 
collection 

and analysis

•Interviews

•Questionnaires

•Pilot test

•Distribution and gathering the questionnaires

•Analysis

•Results and conclusions

Model

•Judicial support

•Performance measures

Conclusions

•Conclusions and recommendations



41 

Magistrate, First Instance courts. For the questionnaires the study 

community is Nablus court only involving its judges and administrative 

staffs. 

3.3.2. The Sample Size 

The sample size is a group of individuals with specific characteristics which 

should be taken to represent the population where usually it cannot be taken 

as a whole. There are several methods to determine the appropriate sample 

size which must be taken, these methods such as the Simple Random 

Method, Systematic Random Method, Accidental Sampling Method 

(McLeod, 2014). 

The number of cases for the performance measure (Clearance rate, Time to 

disposition, Age of pending cases, Trial date certainty) was taken as the 

whole community, so there is no sampling in this area of research. But there 

are several characteristics were needed to determine the factors which 

lengthen the time to disposition and also to generate the correlations between 

these factors, so that for generating these elements a sample of 383 cases of 

different types was taken from the community of 68890 cases, so the sample 

was taken according to the Systematic Random Method (McLeod, 2014).  

The questionnaires that measure the satisfaction and evaluation of the 

stakeholders such as employees, customers, judges, and lawyers were 

distributed in Nablus court only, where the use of these measures is only to 

explain how these measures can be used, where the investigation of 

satisfaction is out of the research scope; and also refers to the homogeneity 



42 

of the judicial units' performance within all courts. The researcher pointed 

out a previous research which was conducted to investigate deeply the 

satisfaction in the Judicial System (Adwan, 2012) 

The reason of taking a small sample of citizens for the evaluation 

questionnaires is the inability to determine the appropriate number of a 

sample, so the Accidental Sampling Method where the local citizens visiting 

the court cannot be identified so the researcher tried to take as much as 

possible of those visitors (McLeod, 2014). 

To show the fit with appropriate confidence interval and confidence level, 

Thompson formula to determine the sample size, so for CI 5% and 95% CL. 

(Thompson, 2012). 

 

𝑛 =
𝑁 ∗ 𝑃(1 − 𝑃)

[(𝑁 − 1) ∗ (
𝑑2

𝑧2)] + 𝑃(1 − 𝑃)
 

Where: 

 n=Sample size 

N=Population 

d=Percentage error (0.05) 

P=proportion of population having the characteristics 

z= Corresponding Normal Distribution Values (1.96 for 95% CL) 

The questionnaires were distributed as follows: (25) to be distributed to all 

judges in Magistrate and First Instance courts in Nablus, (25) to all staff 

members in the same courts. The questionnaires of (25) were distributed to 

attorneys, and (50) to customers following the Accidental Sampling Method. 



43 

The samples of cases are taken from the courthouses to collect data regarding 

the performance indicators such as CR, and also recording the main causes 

for long time to disposition. For these questionnaires to be answered 

completely the researcher and with some help was able to achieve 100% 

response rate. And also for the focus area which is the performance measures 

which concern with the efficient way in managing everything in the courts, 

the interviews with the judges, lawyers, and the technical support were very 

useful in obtaining the required data for the research. 

3.4. Data Collection 

Regarding collecting the required data for the research, different sources 

were identified as the main areas of getting the data which is highly related 

to the purpose of this research, for measuring the satisfaction and evaluation 

of the main stakeholders, the structured questionnaires with 5-point Likert 

scale were distributed to obtain a clear understanding as possible of how 

people and others working within the judicial sector see and trust the judicial 

sector performance, so it was needed to obtain a simple overview of their 

evaluation to be consistent with the calculations and comparisons of the 

performance measures. 

Also, the interviews which were done in order to identify the root causes of 

lengthening the time to disposition, and also to help in measuring the 

performance measures which surveys the current performance of measuring 

the cases within the courts. 



44 

3.5. Research Tools 

This research is based on survey research tools to collect the data required 

for the purposes of this research, this is one of the research tools which is 

chosen according to the research questions (Creswell, 2003), those are the 

interviews to collect data regarding the performance measures, and the 

questionnaires which measure the evaluation and satisfaction of the 

stakeholders. 

3.6. Exploratory Interviews 

The exploratory interviews are the way of collecting data from the persons 

close to the work which is needed to be investigated, these may be in 

different forms such as structured, unstructured, and semi unstructured, and 

also it may be face to face interviews or face to face group interviews (Rubin 

& Rubin, 2005). 

The structured interviews were used in order to identify the factors from the 

main areas which were identified as the most appeared causes of lengthening 

the time to disposition. The questions of interviews concerned in narrowing 

the wide range of areas which were determined as the main critical areas, so 

these questions were very useful through providing an overview of several 

cases in order to consider the main factors that lengthen the time to 

disposition. Also, the unstructured form was used in order to generate a clear 

qualitative and quantitative overview of the current performance, these 

measures were needed to apply the performance indicators which is required 

to monitor the deficiencies of the system see Appendix 4. 



45 

3.7. Questionnaires  

The questionnaires are very useful and easy way to collect the data required 

for the research by the respondents, these may be close-ended questionnaires 

or open-ended questionnaires (Sincero, 2012). The research uses the close-

ended questionnaires where the respondents choose from the answers of the 

Likert scale. 

The questionnaires which were used in this research in order to collect data 

about the evaluation and satisfaction of the respondents regarding the 

performance of the judicial system, where the first is Access and Fairness 

see Appendix 1which concerns in collecting data about the ease of access to 

the system, and also about the fairness of treatment for all customers. The 

second one is the employee satisfaction see Appendix 2, this is to collect 

data about the satisfaction of employees regarding the working conditions 

and the feel of achievement and motivation in the court house environment. 

The third questionnaire is the judge evaluation questionnaire see Appendix 

3, where this one concerns with determining the evaluation of judges to their 

abilities and skills in managing the c