The judges agree that any case must be judged by law, regardless of the public opinion, as answered by 98% of the judges to the public opinion survey carried out by the Public Opinion Research Centre SKDS about the attitude of citizens, advocates and judges towards the judicial system of Latvia. At the same time, judges also pointed out that they feel pressure from the media (58%) and the society (50%).

Also, two thirds or 69% of Latvia's population consider that court decisions have to be law-based, but nearly half or 46% of the population also indicate that they would like their views to be taken into account when judging a case.

In contrast, 42% of advocates admit that when preparing for proceedings they use information available on media and information on public opinion, and almost one fourth or 22% of advocates have made use of public opinion as a tool in their professional activities in order to achieve the adoption of a court decision that is desirable to them.

The priority of society is not the speed of the proceedings, but quality

An interesting picture is shown by the results of the survey on the views of the public on the principles for the adoption of court judgments. Only 14% of the public believes that judgments should be adopted as soon as possible, for 69% it is more important that judgments are law-based. 72% of the population support a judicial system that has less injustice and misconduct, even if it would mean longer court proceedings.

The survey provides an explanation of opinions, whether it should be possible to appeal the judgment of the court, thus hearing the case in several court instances, or, on the contrary, possibilities of appeal should be reduced in order to avoid over-consumption of resources. 82% of the public supports the possibility to appeal court judgments, believing that it helps to prevent possible mistakes. Only 7% support the reduction of number of court instances.

The Public Opinion Research Centre SKDS carried out the survey in cooperation with the Research Institute of Legal Sciences in December 2017. In total, 1648 respondents participated, of which 270 were judges, 375 were sworn advocates, while 1003 people participated in the population survey.

The results of the research were presented at the conference "The Impact of Public Opinion on Judges and the Judicial System in General" organized by the Research Institute of Legal Sciences on January 26.

 

Presentation of the research is available here.

 

Information prepared by

Rasma Zvejniece, the Head of the Division of Communication of the Supreme Court

E-mail: rasma.zvejniece@at.gov.lv, telephone: +371 67020396, +371 28652211