The Council of the Judiciary regulates the digital registry for the national judges' competition

The Plenary of the Judicial Council approved the instructions regulating registration and application through the SITHFUJ platform for the public competition for the selection and appointment of the judges of the National Court of Justice. The decision is contained in Resolution 219-2026, adopted on October 14, 2026, and published in the Second Supplement of the Official Registry No. 397 on Monday, October 26, 2026. The approved annex is a 43-page operational manual that details, screen by screen, how applicants must apply.

The regulatory framework of the competition

The resolution is based on Article 181 of the Constitution of the Republic and Article 264, numbers 1 and 10, of the Organic Code of the Judicial Function, which empower the Plenary to direct selection processes and issue internal regime instructions. The competition is governed by the Regulations issued via Resolution 109-2026, dated July 3, 2026, published in the Fifth Supplement of the Official Registry No. 322 on July 9, 2026, along with its Errata of July 20, 2026.

Added to that regulatory body are the Protocol for the Protection of Personal Data, issued via Resolution 197-2026 on September 22, 2026 (Supplement of the Official Registry No. 375, September 23, 2026), and the Methodology for the execution of the merits phase, approved via Resolution 222-2026 on October 21, 2026 (Fourth Supplement of the Official Registry No. 395, October 22, 2026).

The National Court of Justice is composed of 21 judges organized into six specialized chambers—Administrative Litigation, Tax Litigation, Criminal, Civil and Commercial, Labor, and Family, Children and Adolescents—appointed through a competition of opposition and merits for a period of nine years, without reelection and with partial renewal by thirds every three years. Alternate judges come from the same selection process.

An entirely digital process

The instructions, codified as DNH-SAT-IN-001 version 1.0 of October 2026, were prepared by the National Directorate of Human Talent and validated by the General Directorate with Memorandum CJ-DG-2026-7253-M, dated October 13, 2026. The prior methodological validation was issued by the National Directorate of Planning through memorandums CJ-DNP-2026-1977-M and CJ-DNP-2026-1980-M, dated October 8, 2026.

Access is carried out from the institutional portal of the Judicial Function and the competitions module, under these conditions:

• Registration with an ID number validated online against the DINARP database, which verifies validity, absence of death, and legal age.
• Password of at least seven characters, including an uppercase letter, a lowercase letter, a number, and a special character from the permitted set.
• Three security questions for password recovery.
• Document upload exclusively in PDF format, with a maximum of 5 MB per file.
• Automatic blocking of duplicate files and alerts for repeated filenames.

Requirements, merits, and affirmative actions

The application is organized into tabs that replicate the scoring components of the regulation: requirements of Article 39, academic training, labor and professional experience, training received, training provided, publications, additional merit valuation of Article 52, and affirmative actions of Article 53. In publications, books or legal works of own authorship and up to two articles in indexed journals are accepted, provided they are related to the subject of the chamber to which the applicant is applying.

The system only considers training certificates—received or provided—issued within the last five years counted from the start of the application, and warns the applicant when a document falls outside that period. The choice of position and specialty is recorded only once and does not allow for subsequent modification.

Locks and process closure

The stage concludes only when the platform shows the status “FINALIZADO” (FINISHED). Before this, the applicant must download the form generated by the system, sign it electronically, accept the terms and the authorization for the processing of personal data, and upload it again. Once finalized, the application is permanent and irreversible: documentation cannot be edited, deleted, or added.

The execution of the resolution is the responsibility of the General Directorate and the national directorates of Human Talent, Information and Communication Technologies, and Social Communication. The instrument entered into force on October 14, 2026, the date of its approval, without prejudice to its official publication.

The instructional guide is important because it converts the application phase into a verifiable and traceable procedure, with cross-validation of data against the Civil Registry, the National Electoral Council, the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Labor, the IESS, and the SRI. On this record depends whether the applicants are enabled for the merit and opposition phases, from whose result the 21 judges who will renew the leadership of the Ecuadorian judicial system will emerge.

Source: Official Registry, Second Supplement No. 397, Monday, October 26, 2026, Judicial Function and Indigenous Justice section — Council of the Judiciary, p. 25 (official reference: Resolution 219-2026).