Revue - Droit et société n°118-2024 - 121

Working Time and Work Intensity in Portuguese Courts
and decision-making, exercising judicial discretion, cases involving child custody,
crimes against children, sexual crimes, violent crimes, high information and documentation
requirements (bureaucracy), and rapidly changing law.41 Nevertheless,
although judicial professionals experienced high workload and occupational stress
and suffered from the severe risk of personal and work-related burnout, they also
had high job control and reward, especially professionals such as judges and public
prosecutors. Moreover, people working in judicial professions, that combine high
psychological job demands with high job control, such as judges, have by far the
highest job satisfaction.42
The perception, on the part of judges and public prosecutors, of the work
overload and the increasingly demanding pace reflects the chronic and widely
reported heavy caseload, backlog, time constraints, and overbooking. The highly
demanding nature of management initiatives, and court performance evaluation
programs, setting productivity standards for judicial professionals and courts
intensify this perception. The effect of these on work pressure is, however, still
unclear. Previous research characterized, Portuguese judges and public prosecutors
sociologically and professionally, of whom 75.5% stated that their profession was
the cause of professional stress, with 72.9% emphasizing that the workload was
excessive and 53.2% percent indicating that the volume of work had increased
steadily over the last few years. Overall, 81.1% stated that their professional life
strongly limited their personal life.43
II. Methodological Approach: Working with/in Courts
The Portuguese judicial system is divided into two legal jurisdictions: judicial
courts and administrative and tax courts.44 QUALIS studied the judicial professions
working in both, focusing on the working conditions of three different judicial
41. Paula Casaleiro, Ana Paula Relvas, and João Paulo Dias, " A Critical Review of Judicial Professionals
Working Conditions' Studies, " International Journal for Court Administration, 12 (1), 2021, p. 1-28.
DOI: 10.36745/ijca.334.
42. Tineke Hagen and Stefan Bogaerts, " Work Pressure and Sickness Absenteeism Among Judges, "
Psychiatry Psychology and Law, 21, 2014 p. 92-111. DOI: 10.1080/13218719.2013.790003.
43. António Casimiro Ferreira et al., Quem são os nossos magistrados?, op. cit., p. 177-187.
44. The judicial jurisdiction divided the national territory into twenty-three District Courts (first
instance courts), plus five courts of second instance (appeals), and the Supreme Judicial Court. Each
of the District Courts comprises a Central Section, with specialized sections for different areas (central
civil, criminal, criminal investigation, family and juvenile, labor, commerce and enforcement of sentence),
Local Sections, which include general sections (local civil, local criminal, and minor crimes),
and Proximity Sections. The administrative and fiscal jurisdiction, in turn, comprises seventeen courts
of first instance, two courts of second instance (appeals) and the Supreme Administrative Court. For
a more detailed description of the Portuguese judicial system see: João Paulo Dias and Conceição
Gomes, " Judicial Reforms 'Under Pressure': The New Map/Organisation of the Portuguese Judicial
System, " Utrecht Law Review, 14 (1), 2018, p. 174-186. DOI: 10.18352/ulr.448; or go to Portuguese
e-justice portal, at .
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https://e-justice.europa.eu/16/EN/national_justice_systems?PORTUGAL&mem

Revue - Droit et société n°118-2024

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