In (German) courts, civil cases (including family cases) are assigned according to local and subject matter jurisdiction. However, there are still some (general) cases which are distributed among all the panels of a court with jurisdiction. This is usually done by rotation (allocation of cases in a certain order and according to predeter-mined criteria - with the help of so-called rotation sheets). At the Higher Regional Court of Cologne, new incoming (general) cases that do not fall under a specific specialised jurisdiction of one panel („Senat“) are now allocated according to a new system. This system is electronically supported. Each incoming case is assigned a certain number of points. These point values, divided by the manpower/share of manpower deployed in the panels, are credited to the senates when they receive the cases. Any new case which is not assigned to a particular Senate because of a spe-cial competence is assigned to the panel with the lowest point value (the lowest "allocation sum") at that time. The calculation of the point values and the documentati-on of the allocation are carried out electronically.

Independent commissions and other bodies take a more and more important role in the process of the selection of judges, which makes the existing system of shared competences (executive - president of state or parliament) even more complicated. The paper will investigate in a comparative perspective possible solutions there may be to guarantee both that the best qualified persons should be appointed and at the same time assures the mutual control needed to assure that the requirement of the independent court established by law of Art 6 (1) ECHR is met, and independence not only from the legislative and the executive, as well as form the parties of the procedure, but from the judiciary be assured.

The new Hungarian Administrative Court Procedure Act brought a fundamental change to the composition of courts proceeding in administrative cases. The Act - in accordance with the Fundamental Law of Hungary - returned to the principle of adjudicating in panels at first instance; this meant a change from the previously established convention of courts proceeding as a single judge. However, this change also affected the administration of administrative divisions of courts.

My research covers two main issues. First, how are case assignment plans created and what are they supposed to reflect based on the recent changes in Hungarian law? Second, how are courts of first instance following the principle of adjudicating in panels in administrative court procedures?

For the first part of my research, I used a comparative and theoretical approach to evaluate the practices of Hungarian court administration. I evaluated the case assignment plans of courts with an administrative division and found that they almost always breach the relevant sections of the Courts Organization and Administration Act by not stating clearly the composition of the adjudicating panels, thus violating the right to a natural judge. I also offer a number of possible solutions that respect the right to a tribunal established by law according to Article 6 of the ECHR.

The second part of my study is based on the empirical research of court databases and aims to discover how courts are following the principle of adjudicating in a panel in the first instance in administrative court procedures. I found that there was a significant increase in cases adjudicated in a panel in all courts since the new Administrative Court Procedure Act is in force. Nevertheless, courts based in the capital city are more oriented to follow this principle, while rural courts are slower in adopting the endeavors of the legislature. It is particularly striking how some rural courts are ordering that a single judge proceeds instead of a panel when possible, while the opposite is true e.g. for the Budapest Environs Regional Court.

My research stresses once more the importance of the organizational culture of courts and the responsibility of court administration in alignment with legislative goals and their integration into practice while securing ius de non evocando.