Dominican Republic courts have reached an 87 percent backlog clearance rate, Supreme Court of Justice President Dr. Luis Henry Molina announced, but legal professionals in Santo Domingo warn that fast decisions are compromising sound legal reasoning.
Writing in an analysis published on August 22, 2026, attorney Carlos Gonzalez Cuello stated that while speed addresses long-standing delays, courts are increasingly issuing rulings that lack proper legal justification.
The drive for efficiency stems from paragraph 1 of Article 69 of the Dominican Constitution, which guarantees citizens the right to accessible, timely, and free justice. Under the legal principle that justice delayed is justice denied, tardy rulings cause severe harm to users and risk losing their legal efficacy.
Progress on judicial backlogs has accelerated over the past two years. During Judicial Branch Day celebrations in January 2025, officials reported that 73 percent of the country's courts were free from backlog.
Court backlog figures show rapid progress
Twelve months later, at the solemn hearing on January 7, 2026, Supreme Court President Molina revealed that the clearance rate had risen to 87 percent. He added that the high court had eliminated all case files older than 12 months, while newspaper Diario Libre reported that 90 percent of cases across the system are now resolved in under a year.
However, legal experts point out that speed is only one measure of a functioning judicial system. Under Resolution 1920-2003, issued by the Supreme Court of Justice on November 13, 2003, the legal reasoning behind a sentence serves as the primary source of legitimacy for a judge and guarantees protection against prejudice and arbitrariness.
The Constitutional Court reinforced this requirement on February 11, 2013, through ruling TC/0009/13. That decision established a mandatory test requiring courts to provide sufficient legal rationale to legitimize their actions before society.
Flaws emerge in swift judicial rulings
Gonzalez Cuello argued that a well-founded decision delivered five years late is just as damaging as an unreasoned ruling issued in three months. He noted that ungrounded decisions occur in Dominican courts more frequently than the system admits.
Practitioners routinely encounter rulings that transcribe the requests of opposing parties and summarize evidence before jumping directly to a conclusion without any connecting argument line. Other decisions cite extensive legal articles that bear no relation to the conflict, or fail to rule on petitions transcribed earlier in the text.
While the judicial system tracks processing times with precision, it currently collects no quantitative data on the quality of legal arguments. As a result, observers cannot determine whether backlogs are being cleared by sacrificing legal motivation.
Judges demand improved working conditions
Systemic deficiencies and poor working conditions continue to hamper judicial work across the country. In Santo Domingo province, which historically suffered from the nation's worst judicial infrastructure, courts previously conducted coercion measure hearings inside shipping containers.
Workplace strains led to widespread protest in May 2026, when 450 of the Dominican Republic's 737 judges joined a 24-hour strike. The striking magistrates demanded dignified working conditions and qualified court personnel, arguing that proper legal motivation is difficult to produce in sub-standard facilities.
Looking ahead, legal commentators are urging judicial leaders to rethink operational targets as the National Council of the Magistracy prepares to select new judges.
Alongside backlog statistics, reformers are calling for metrics that evaluate whether judges thoroughly consider party petitions, properly analyze evidence, apply appropriate legal doctrine, and issue coherent rulings that uphold both speed and legal foundation.
