Commentary

Commentary on the Bangalore Principles of Judicial Conduct
Following requests from judges, lawyers and law reformers, the Group agreed at its 4th meeting in Vienna in October 2005 to prepare and publish a Commentary on the Bangalore Principles of Judicial Conduct. The Commentary is designed to enable judges and teachers of judicial ethics to understand not only the drafting and cross-cultural consultation process of the Bangalore Principles and the rationale for the values and principles incorporated in it, but to also facilitate a wider understanding of the applicability of those values and principles to issues, situations and problems that arise or emerge. A draft Commentary prepared by the Coordinator was submitted in March 2007 to a joint meeting of the Group and of an Open-ended Intergovernmental Group of Experts convened by UNODC in terms of ECOSOC resolution 2006/23, and was examined paragraph by paragraph and approved subject to certain amendments.

In July 2007, ECOSOC unanimously adopted a resolution recommended to it by the UN Commission on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice in which it commended the work of the Group and requested UNODC to translate the Commentary "into all official languages of the United Nations and to disseminate it to Member States, international and regional judicial forums and appropriate organizations."[1] In September 2007, UNODC published the Commentary – a 175-page document – in English. By the end of 2011, the commentary has been translated in several languages.