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Judiciary
The Judiciary is one of the three arms of the Government and is established under Chapter 4 of the Constitution of Kenya. Its duties are also further spelt out in the Judicature Act, Chapter 8 of the Laws of Kenya. Its core functions are administration of justice, formulation and implementation of judicial policies and compilation and dissemination of case law and other legal information for effective administration of justice.

It discharges this mandate through the following branches:-

  • The Court of Appeal
  • The High Court
  • The Magistrates Courts
  • The Kadhis Courts
  • The Judicial Service Commission, and
  • The National Council for Law Reporting

At independence there were only seven judges of the High Court and 40 Resident Magistrates. Today the Judiciary has 10 Judges of the Court of Appeal, 45 High Court Judges, 278 Magistrates and 2,557 paralegal staff distributed all over the country, making a grand total of 2,890.

However despite the increase in the number of court facilities, judicial staff and paralegals, the Judiciary continues to experience pressure from the public who depend on it principally for dispute settlement.

Some of the challenges facing the judiciary include increasing public scrutiny over its performance, demand for accountability, corruption and unethical practices among its staff, need to assert its independence, an outcry for speedy delivery of justice among others.

To address these challenges the Judiciary has undertaken to assert its independence as enshrined in the constitution especially helpful will be the enactment of the Judicature Act to ensure total independence, introduction of a performance management system and introduction of measure that will reduce the backlog of cases.

The need for further reforms in the judiciary was also brought to the fore by the National dialogue and reconciliation team through constitutional review under the agenda four of the National dialogue and reconciliation.

This would be achieved through constitutional review to anchor judicial reform measures including financial independence, transparent and merit based appointment and removal of judges, reconstruction of the judicial service commission to include other stakeholders and enhance independence and autonomy of the commission. Also, streamlining the functioning of the legal and judicial institutions by adopting a sector-wide approach to increase recruitment, training, planning, management and implementation of programmes and activities in the justice sector.