A Judiciary ‘Suspended’ in Transition? A Case Study of Portuguese Judges in East Timor

This chapter focuses on foreign Portuguese judges in domestic courts in East Timor. It builds on data collected from semi-structured interviews with Timorese and Portuguese judges, international and Timorese programme managers associated with the United Nations Development Programme (‘UNDP’), candidates and foreign judges at the Legal Training Centre and foreign judicial inspectors to address the following questions: How are foreign judges used in East Timor, what were the rationales for introducing them, did the foreign judges carry out their intended roles in practice, and have they assisted in improving judicial independence and the social legitimacy of courts in the country? Field observations in 2018, media reports, and other publicly available documents are used to triangulate the data collected from the interviews to study how foreign judges have carried out their roles in practice in East Timor. The data also illustrates the different rationales used to explain why foreign judges were introduced in the Timorese justice sector and their shifting influence on the local judges, politicians and citizens. The chapter thus aims to provide a ‘deeper’ empirical account of the role of foreign judges in the Timorese judiciary.