The Judicial Nominations Committee and Transformative Constitutionalism: An opportunity to restore trust in justice?

This blog post was translated from the original Spanish version by using AI tools.
If you encounter any errors, please contact us.

Introduction

Venezuela illustrates what happens when the established legal and institutional order proves manifestly unable to hear and adjudicate serious human rights violations in a timely manner. As a result, Venezuelan society is marked by an urgent longing for justice that cuts across all sectors and social classes.

From the perspective of transformative constitutionalism, it is therefore particularly relevant to examine how the Judicial Nominations Committee (Comité de Postulaciones Judiciales, “CPJ”) is being formed, as the first milestone in a broader transformation of the justice system. This process has been set in motion by the political agreements reached between representatives of the opposition-majority National Assembly elected in 2015 and those of the National Assembly elected in 2025, which is strongly aligned with the government.

Yet amid this moderate optimism, the CPJ calls for critical scrutiny. The question is whether the initiative is the first step towards a broader institutional transformation – one capable of restoring public trust in the justice system – or merely a realignment of forces within the existing power structure.

1. An institutional Crossroads

The Venezuelan justice system is in a deep crisis, extensively documented by the Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Venezuela and the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR).

This institutional decline has fostered patterns of impunity for serious human rights violations. The problem therefore extends beyond the strictly ideological and acquires a moral and civic dimension, which goes a long way towards explaining citizens’ deep distrust of the judicial institutions.

It should be stressed, then, that the crisis of Venezuela’s justice system is neither new nor isolated: it is the outcome of a broader policy of concentrating power and exercising it arbitrarily. The subordination of the Supreme Tribunal of Justice (“TSJ”) to the Executive and the excessive provisional status of judges must accordingly be understood as facets of a much deeper problem – how power is conceived and exercised in a democracy.

2. The Dilemma of the Judicial Nominations Committee

The CPJ was created by the 1999 Constitution as a pluralistic, counter-majoritarian mechanism for citizen participation. Its core purpose is to curb party-political interference in the selection of Supreme Tribunal justices by subjecting the moral and professional suitability of candidates to the scrutiny of civil society.

Under Article 270 of the Constitution, the CPJ is an advisory body to the Citizen Power, composed of representatives of the various sectors of civil society and tasked with assisting in the pre-selection of candidates for the TSJ.

In open contradiction with the constitutional text, however, the Organic Law of the Supreme Tribunal of Justice (“LOTSJ”) requires a group of National Assembly deputies to sit on the Committee, on the questionable argument that, as elected officials, they embody the representation of civil society. This approach was first adopted in the 2004 LOTSJ – and confirmed in the 2010 reform – with an eleven-member body made up of five deputies and six civil society representatives.

The 2022 reform of the LOTSJ deserves particular mention. By setting the membership at twenty-one – eleven deputies and ten representatives of other sectors of civil society – it gave legislators an absolute majority and cemented direct political control over the pre-selection process.

Although the new composition established by the 2026 reform of the LOTSJ returns the majority to civil society (eleven deputies and twelve civil society representatives), the selection procedure now under way remains tainted from the outset by unconstitutionality, since it distorts the meaning and purpose of the 1999 Constitution.

Worth highlighting in this regard is the statement issued by the Academy of Political and Social Sciences on 31 August 2026. It stresses the need for genuine civil society representation rather than a party majority, and accordingly calls for transparent processes grounded in merit, professional suitability and citizen oversight.

3. The Challenges ahead

With the CPJ about to be constituted, the evaluating body must be depoliticised and kept, as far as possible, separate from the political body that makes the final appointment. The work of the newly appointed Credentials Review Council – a novel independent and pluralistic body – therefore deserves close attention. The Council is to design the evaluation rubric and act as an external adviser in the rigorous review of candidates’ profiles, lending the process greater credibility.

Far from promising perfect solutions, Venezuelan reality calls for continued effort from every available sphere of influence, in a socio-political context heavily conditioned by external factors. Against this background, the design and implementation of the evaluation rubrics, access to truthful and verifiable information on applicants’ backgrounds and credentials, and the effectiveness of challenges lodged by civil society are key benchmarks for assessing the democratic quality of the selection process.

Conclusions

The renewal of the TSJ marks a turning point in our political and institutional history. A renewal of the bench that perpetuates the flaws of the past would therefore lack the transformative potential an effective democratic transition requires.

It thus falls to citizens to keep demanding higher standards of impartiality and transparency throughout the process, so that it serves loftier national aims, such as the restoration of participatory democracy under the constitutional rule of law. This requires replacing the old paradigm of party-political loyalty with one centred on technical and moral suitability, as the Constitution envisages.

An independent Judicial Nominations Committee is a cornerstone of the country’s institutional transformation, paving the way for international standards that ensure access to the highest judicial office is governed solely by merit and suitability. Properly constituted, the Committee ceases to be a mere formality and becomes a decisive first step towards restoring public trust in the institutions.

Ultimately, from the perspective of transformative constitutional law, Venezuela’s political transition cannot rest on trading away, for the sake of convenience, one of the core attributes of the rule of law: the separation of powers, whose effectiveness depends unequivocally on judicial independence. It must rest instead on strict adherence to the rules and procedures of the rule of law, on the premise that the unconditional protection of human rights is the only path to lasting peace.