Supreme Court of Honduras

The Supreme Court of Honduras (Spanish: Corte Suprema de Justicia de Honduras; CSJ) is the Supreme Court and Constitutional Court of Honduras. The Supreme Court is the highest judicial authority in Honduras.

There are four chambers — civil, criminal, constitutional, and labor — with a certain number of justices assigned to each chamber as established in the 316th article of the Constitution. It has fourteen constitutional powers and duties, including:

The court has 15 Judges:

The process of selecting new members of the Supreme Court of Honduras is sui generis, involving the participation of various sectors of civil society. Judges are elected by the National Congress from a list of candidates proposed by a 7-member Nominating Board consisting of:

Each entity submits a list of twenty candidates to a “Nominating Panel, of 7 members, each representing one nominating entity, which scrutinizes the qualifications of each submitted nominee on the 7 nomination lists (140 total), and any “self-nominated” candidates. The Nominating Panel selects 45 of these candidates to be included in a nomination list submitted to Congress. The National Congress selects the new 15 Supreme Court members from this list.

Following months of political wrangling that dominated news in Honduras, the National Congress selected 15 new judges to ascend to the Supreme Court of Justice shortly before midnight on January 25, 2009, as the previous court’s term was set to expire that same day. The final issue was an attempt by the executive branch to re-elect a sitting member of the court who wasn’t on the slate of 45 candidates, Sonia Marlina Dubón de Flores.

The standoff included alleged threats from Defense Minister Arístides Mejía to surround the congressional building with tanks should members fail to comply with the request to reseat Dubón. An angry retort from President of the National Congress Roberto Micheletti, who said that the legislature abided by democracy and rule of law, not military threats or pressure. Mejía later denied making such threats.

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