Work (Ajil)

The Mongolia Judicial Reform Project (JRP) is a multi-year initiative to improve a variety of aspects of the Mongolian legal system (see link in the sidebar for more information). Partners in the project include USAID and the National Center for State Courts. I am here under the auspices of the JRP to work with the Supreme Court Research Center to better define its goals and objectives. The Supreme Court Research Center is the entity responsible, among other things, for compiling, analyzing and reporting information about cases handled by all the trial and appellate courts in the country.

So far, working in the SCRC is surprisingly familiar. Anyone who has worked in the judicial branch in the US would recognize and understand the dynamics between branches and within different units of the same branch here in Mongolia. For example, although the principle of an independent court system/judiciary seems well established, how to make that concept a practical reality is very much an ongoing project. Also familiar to anyone who’s worked in Alaska is the administrative structure of the Mongolian court system (highly unified and administered by the supreme court), the caseload distribution (about 40-50% of all cases are filed in Ulaanbaator with the rest scattered among trial and appellate courts located in rural aimags), and the lack of transportation and communication infrastructure. Unlike in Alaska, though, teleconferences do not seem to be widely used, perhaps because calling long distance is so expensive.


Two of my co-workers at the Supreme Court Research Center