In comparative law, it has been gradually expressed the need for more active judge and that the judge should have been administered with wide powers. Today, in Anglo-American law, which the party control and the concept of passive judge is more in place, it has been accepted that the judge should take an active role in the judgment for the purpose of accelerating the speed of the justice. Barriers to access to justice and the slow process of the litigation are common hurdle of diverse legal systems. In comparative law, new legislation has been introduced to overcome these obstacles where the case management has become a part of them as a new procedural concept. New English Civil Procedure Rules have empowered the judge with some authorities under the case management powers and the activity of the judge has been strengthened. Similar to English law, some of the common law states such as US and Australia do also apply case management rules.
Case management is the beginning phase of the case in which the judge prepares the plan of the trial and determines the future course of the action together with the parties. Judge, in this phase, would prepare the plan of the trial with time schedules and ensure that the action becomes ready for the trial.
Under Turkish Law, there is any pre-trial phase as similar to Anglo-American Law. One of the reasons for this is that the Turkish Civil Procedure system is based on written procedure in general terms. Under the current system, court conducts its review primarily on the procedural issues. When a case is filed, Court initially would start its examination to determine whether any estoppels exist and if there is any, it would dismiss the case on procedural grounds. If there is no obstacle on the procedural aspect, the court would get into the merits of the case and render a decision on the merits. There are no phases in the trial in terms of gathering the evidence.
A draft law on Civil Procedure has been prepared recently in parallel to the development in comparative law. In the draft law, trial is divided into two phases, namely pre-examination and hearing on the merits. Thus, it is being aimed to have collected all statements and evidence in the pre-trial phase and have the Court decide on the merits at the second phase of the trial. Given the growing workload of the courts everyday, the severity of the case management is becoming more important. If the bill is enacted after getting into the agenda of the Parliament, trial process could be speed up in line with the provisions regarding pre-trial.
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