Between Management and the Rule of Law: on the move towards a management model for the judiciary - Results from the project “Basic research into Court Management in Switzerland”

The courts are the jewel of any state governed by the rule of law. Yet even the judi-cial system must modernise its methods of organisation and management if it is to guarantee sustainable jurisdiction. But how much management is itself sustainable within the judicial system? And what is the right way towards an optimized judicial system and well performing courts? An interdisciplinary research team from six uni-versities under the leadership of the Centre of Competence for Public Management at the University of Bern has considered this question in several dissertations and studies as part of a Swiss National Science Foundation project. This paper will pro-vide a reflection of the research work and future fields of research.