Economic Court

On Friday we visited the chambers of Economic Court Judge Victor Orindas. (He is a professor at Moldova State; I delivered a guest lectured in his class at the American Studies Center earlier in the semester.)

Judge Orindas answered all of our questions about the function of the Economic Court, the qualifications to serve as a judge on the court, the term of judges on the economic court, current proposals to limit the immunity of judges. . .

Economic Court is like a commercial court, hearing cases related to business and contracts.

As he was describing his job to us, he explained that the laws of the Republic of Moldova are available in an online database, MoldLex. So the judges can access the body of law from their computer.

Since some of the older judges prefer using hard copies rather than the computer database, the Judge showed us how hard copies of amendments to provisions are stapled into the bound volumes that are in judges' chambers

Apparently when a part of the civil code has been changed by the legislature, there is paperwork that the judges must sign to indicate that they are aware of this change in the provision to the law.

We were able to observe proceedings in 2 cases during our time in the Judge's chambers.

As I sat there, I felt slightly overwhelmed by the stacks of folders with cases on the desk of the judge, the desk of the clerk, and even more stacks in cabinets. The caseload for these judges is quite high.

It reminded me of the day I started working in the Greetings Office of the White House. We had boxes and boxes of "Baby Birth" card requests (I think our address had recently been advertised in Parents magazine) And I remember feeling completely overwhelmed - that we just did not have the capacity to handle the staggering volume of requests - and I was brainstorming what we could do to go through the backlog.

As my eyes wandered over the stacks of case files on the desks and in the closet, I wondered if these piles of files caused the same anxiety as those boxes of card requests did for me.