There is surprisingly little academic literature offering a comprehensive overview of judicial vetting programs. Instead, the bulk of the materials analyzes judicial vetting on a country-by-country basis. The most comprehensive work on vetting is a 2007 work titled Justice as Prevention: Vetting Public Employees in Transitional Societies. Part one of the book offers case studies of global vetting programs—reports from Central America, South America, Africa, and Europe are all available. Part two, in turn, is a collection of thematic essays on vetting, which this paper draws heavily on. It also relies on the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights’ (OHCHR) operational framework for vetting, as well as the work of Marina Matic Boskovic, an academic and justice reform consultant at the World Bank.
Through these sources, this report will address the three questions that academics most frequently address in regards to vetting. First, it will look at the types of institutions that should perform the vetting process itself, as well as what role, if any, the international community should play. Second, it will outline the best practices for designing a vetting program. Finally, it will discuss some of the benefits and drawbacks of a comprehensive vetting process, both of which must be taken into consideration before designing a particular country’s vetting program. While this is by no means a comprehensive summary of the literature on vetting, it does offer a high-level overview of what I have found to be the most directly relevant work that is available in English.