When Willy Mutunga became Kenya’s chief justice in 2011, he made reductions in judicial delay and corruption top priorities. Drawing on previous plans to fix the same issues, Mutunga and his team developed a far-reaching reform program: the Judiciary Transformation Framework. Their goals included addressing administrative problems that had hindered citizens’ access to justice and opening up a historically closed institution to public engagement. Judges, magistrates, and court staff helped court registrars standardize and speed up administrative processes. Early efforts to introduce new technologies that would reduce delays—one of Kenya’s 2012–14 Open Government Partnership commitments—failed to achieve nationwide implementation. But the newly created Performance Management Directorate developed a case-tracking system that facilitated nationwide monitoring of delays and workloads. The newly established Office of the Judiciary Ombudsperson and strengthened Court Users’ Committees opened lines of communication for citizens to register complaints, suggest changes, and receive responses. Although many reforms were in early stages in 2015, Mutunga and his team developed and enacted policies that changed the ways the judiciary served the Kenyan public.

Maya Gainer drafted this case study based on interviews conducted in Nairobi, Kenya, in September and October 2015. Case published November 2015.

In 1993, Emile Short, a private practice lawyer, took on the challenging job of leading Ghana’s new Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice. Created by the 1992 constitution, the commission had a triple mandate: ombudsman, anti-corruption agency and human rights monitor. Short had to construct the organization from scratch and make it relevant in a political landscape dominated by the presidency. He had to execute a constitutionally broad mandate and develop a public reputation for independence, despite a limited resource base and no enforcement authority. The commission’s power lay in its evidence-based investigations and public hearings, which, combined with media and public support, helped to expose high-level corruption and mobilize social pressures for greater accountability. Short focused on building the commission’s credibility, developing public education programs and creating a network of anti-corruption civil society groups. Short asserted the commission’s independence early on, investigating allegations of corruption against sitting ministers in 1996. For the first time in Ghana, public investigations of incumbent politicians triggered ministerial resignations.