Revue - Droit et société n°118-2024 - 122

João Paulo Dias et al.
professions: judges, public prosecutors, and court clerks. However, for the present
article, the focus was only on the judicial district courts, leaving aside higher
judicial courts (courts of appeal and the Supreme Court) and the administrative
and fiscal branch. The district or lower courts (courts of first instance), comprise
85% of all the personnel working in the judicial and the administrative and fiscal
courts (first instance, appeals, and Supreme Courts).
Judges are responsible for administering justice on behalf of the people and, to
ensure independence and impartiality, they may not carry out any other duties, be
they public or private, except for unpaid teaching or scientific research in the field
of law. Portuguese public prosecutors, in turn, are responsible for representing
the state, carrying out prosecutions, and defending the democratic rule of law and
the interests determined by law, not only in the criminal field but also in other
jurisdictional areas, such as family and labor, in the different courts. Access to the
profession of judge and public prosecutor is a three-stage process: a public competition
(consisting of knowledge tests, a curriculum evaluation, and a psychological
selection test); a theoretical and practical course undertaken at the Center for
Judicial Studies (Centro de Estudos Judiciários); and a court apprenticeship. Finally,
court clerks provide procedural assistance in the courts or public prosecution
services. Access to the career of a court clerk starts with the entry-level roles of
auxiliary clerk (escrivão auxiliar) in the judicial service and auxiliary legal clerk
(técnico de justiça auxiliar) in the public prosecution services. Access is open to
persons who have completed a professional training course and who have been
approved via a public admission procedure.
QUALIS developed a multidimensional, mixed-methods approach to evaluate
the judicial professions' working conditions, through an online self-completion
questionnaire and interviews conducted with judges, public prosecutors, and court
clerks. Both the interviews and the questionnaire focused on six dimensions relating
to working conditions, each of them including several items (besides professional
characterization): organizational, environmental, and personal/individual working
experience, work-family balance, health and well-being and impact of COVID-19
measures. Among the primary sources collected in this context are laws, official
reports, and statistics, reports of district courts' activities, scientific literature, and
political debates involving both the Parliament and the government.45
The purpose of the present article is to analyze the perceptions of the Portuguese
judicial professions regarding two major dimensions of court working conditions:
working time and work intensity. It discusses the results of the questionnaire and
the case-study interviews, based on the methodological design presented in the
following sections.
45. João Paulo Dias, Conceição Gomes, and Marina Henriques, " Conducting Socio-Legal Research
in Portugal: From the Experience of the Permanent Observatory for Justice to the Study of Working
Conditions in Courts, " Oñati Socio-Legal Series, 13, S1, 2023, p. S10-S29.
558 ■ Droit et Société 118/2024
Revue - Droit et société n°118-2024

Table des matières de la publication Revue - Droit et société n°118-2024
