All rulings with case-law theses developed and which are placed on the home page of the Supreme Court, are of case-law importance and courts, inter alia, the Senate, should refer to those in rulings rather than to rulings in other cases, which are not considered to be case-law and which are not available for public, Pavels Gruzins, the Head of the Division of Case-law, indicated at the Plenary Session of the Supreme Court on the 16th of March, noting that this issue is discussible.

The Head of the Division of Case-law marked in his report that part of practising lawyers are dissatisfied with the fact that access to Court Information System (CIS), in which all court rulings are added, is limited and so the question is reasoned, if the CIS data base may be considered as case-law and to be refered to in court rulings. P.Gruzins noted that opinions on this issue differ. Part of lawyers and judges refer also to rulings, which are not published in case-law data base, but the others believe that only rulings available for public and which are considered to be case-law must be used for references, as circumstances differ in each case and judgment adopted in some case may not be used as an argument in another case.

Rulings of the Senate, which are important for creation of coordinated case-law and which may be considered as case-law, are selected, processed and placed in CIS case-law database, as well as on the home page of the Supreme Court.  CIS cae-law data base is available also publicly, in court portal. 

180 rulings of the Senate were selected in 2011; inter alia, 54 rulings in civil cases, 53 rulings in criminal cases and 73 rulings in administrative cases. Advisers of the Division of case-law coordinate issues on publishing a ruling, on accentuation of conclusion important for development of law with a judge, who prepared the ruling and with the Chair of the department of the Senate. Rulings are anonymized before being published.  

As it may be seen in CIS statistics, case-law module was visited and examined on average of 1670 times per month in 2011, and chapter of case-law decisions available on the home page of the Supreme court is the most visited one also.

Preparation and placing court rulings in case-law data bases is one of tasks of the Division of Case-law of the Supreme Court. The second task is to perform summarisation of case-law and research of particular issues of application of legal norms.

At the annual Plenary Session, the Head of the Division of Case-law informed that despite the fact that financing hasn’t been allocated in the budget of the Supreme Court to one of its basic functions – to create uniform case-law and to develop legal thought and national law, the Supreme Court in 2011, however, was able to complete compilations of court decisions on compensation of moral damage in criminal proceedings and on case-law in cases about individual labour disputes commenced previous year, as well as to perform new studies in administrative law – on compensation of moral damage in administrative cases, in civil law – on usage and division of undivided property, rights and responsibility of joint owners, in criminal law – on case-law, when stipulating compulsory measures of medical nature.   

Legal scientists are involved in research, because, as P.Gruzins points out, it is impossible to do it only with resources of the Division of Case-law; however, involving judges and senators of the Supreme Court is impossible due their work load, as it would be necessary to relieve them from reviewing cases.

 

Information prepared by

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

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