The Justices of the Supreme Court are elected by the National Assembly for a term of two years, while the Judges of the First and Second Instance are appointed by the Supreme Court for a term of two years. The Justices of the Minor Courts are elected by popular vote.
As in most Latin-American countries, the course of justice is not always speedy, all depositions, no matter how trivial the case under trial may be, nor whether it be civil or criminal, having to be laboriously written out, "examination-in-chief" and "cross-examination" being practices little known. Naturally, an immense amount of valuable time is thus consumed, and the results are anything but conclusive.
To a considerable extent the administration of justice in Central America is based upon the same principles as those in force in the United States, and it is generally admitted, especially by those who have suffered from them, that these are far from perfect. The theory of Latin-American justice is excellent, such theory being that every man is entitled to justice speedily and without delay, freely and without price. We all know that this is not the experience of litigants generally, and in no part of Latin America can the administration of justice be considered entirely perfect. Salvador is not worse off than any of its neighbours in this respect, while, on the other hand, there is a decided amount of respect entertained for the judiciary, and few verdicts have been given which have called forth any protest, nor many rulings handed down which have excited conflict among the public.
Travellers in Latin-American countries, more often than not such as pay but a very superficial visit to those lands, are in the habit of drawing pitiful pictures of the cruelty practised upon prisoners and injustice shown towards litigants, and they indulge in harrowing accounts of "nauseating filth," "poisonous stenches," "germs of disease," "bad food," and numerous other, blood-curdling horrors. However true such descriptions of some countries are, and I rather imagine that most of them are the outcome of vivid imagination on the one hand and of blind prejudice upon the other, it is certain that nothing of this kind can be truthfully said about Salvador.