WILLEMSTAD - Last year, the Joint Court of Justice received over 36,000 cases in First Instance. This represents a sixteen percent increase compared to 2021, but it is still below the levels observed in the pre-Covid period between 2018 and 2019, as stated in the Court's Annual Report.
However, the numbers are rising across all legal domains, particularly in administrative law and criminal law, where there was a seventeen percent increase in cases.
In administrative law, the increase is mainly visible in the number of tax cases at the Aruba and Curaçao branches. In total, almost the same number of cases were processed and concluded in 2022, which represents a fourteen percent increase compared to 2021.
Similar to the influx of cases, there is an increase in all legal domains: civil law by eleven percent, administrative law by two percent, and criminal law by seventeen percent. The rise in civil law cases is mainly due to the deployment of additional capacity to clear the backlog of cases.
Appeals
The total influx of appeals in 2022 amounted to nearly 1,150 cases, representing a slight increase of one percent compared to the influx in 2021. The influx of administrative law cases increased by eleven percent, while civil law decreased by four percent and criminal law remained at the same level.
The outflow of appeals reached slightly over 1,300 cases, showing an increase of nineteen percent compared to 2021. This increase is largely due to the higher outflow of tax cases at the BES and Curaçao branches.
Backlogs
Backlog refers to cases that have been submitted but not yet concluded. The Court of First Instance had a total of over 6,500 pending cases by the end of 2022, representing a four percent increase compared to the previous year.
In Appeals, there were nearly 1,200 cases on the docket by the end of 2022, significantly fewer than at the end of 2021 when the backlog stood at nearly 1,500 cases. Particularly in cases involving civil servants, many ongoing cases were concluded in 2022.