| Abstract: | Ethiopia’s Constitution provides for a parallel –federal and state– court system.
While federal courts entertain cases of federal matter, state courts adjudicate
regional matters. However, there are ambiguous issues and practical limitations
relating to this judicial power decentralization, some of which have an undesirable
implication on the self-governance of regional states. These are the federal versus
state matter controversy, the scope of the Federal Judicial Administration Council’s
involvement in the nomination of state court judges, lack of standard criteria to
calculate the cost regional state courts incur in exercising delegated judicial powers
and the issue of cassation over cassation on state matters. Several challenges arise
from the distribution of judicial authority in Ethiopia. First, regional states have
done little with regard to distinguishing state matters from federal matters, and
claiming reimbursement for costs they incur in exercising delegated federal judicial
power. Second, the federal Supreme Court allocates nominal compensatory budget
without considering the number of federal cases that are adjudicated in state courts
and accordingly computing the cost incurred while state courts exercise delegated
federal judicial power. Third, cassation over cassation on state matters seems to be
inconsistent with the federal arrangement. These factors indicate gaps in the
decentralization of judicial power which necessitate constitutional and legislative
measures that can rectify these limitations commensurate with the power of
regional states to exercise judicial power in regional matters. |
