“Last year that was eventful for our country, Latvian court system, inter alia, the Supreme Court was able to provide stable work and availability to fair trial in any circumstances”, said Ivars Bickovics, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, when summarising work of the Supreme Court in 2011 at Plenary Session on the 16th of March.

At the same time, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court drew attention that alarming features appeared in reports of heads of the Supreme Court structural units. However, these features should not become characteristic for judicial state. Firstly, the Supreme Court, when analysing its work, should not speak so much in such categories as speed, intensity of administering justice, decrease of accumulation of cases, but, unfortunately, this is what is expected from court rather than quality of work. “Also in relation to question about liquidation of chambers of the Supreme Court terms of administering justice, and not its quality, are mentioned as argument”, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court said. At the press conference after the Plenary Session, the Chief Justice admitted to journalists that the Supreme Court at present works balancing on the edge between quantity and quality that actually doesn’t fit the highest court instance, as its mission is to administer the law correctly and proficiently and to put fullstop and to correct mistakes of previous court instances rather than review bigger number of cases faster. 

Secondly, colleagues from other countries would not understand why the Supreme Court has to speak so much about creation of laws, about amendments to be made in legal regulation of litigation, as it is obligation of legislators, not the judiciary.  “Unfortunately, these are survival initiatives. Although rights for legislation initiative are not provided for the Supreme Court, we have to initiate, ask, propose, participate in work groups of ministries and sessions of the Saeima’s committees, when thinking of how to make our work more effective”, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court admitted. Not seeing another opportunity of how to decrease work load of judges, the court will follow up and participate with its proposals in legislation processes actively also in future, and could make work of courts more effective, making litigation faster, more simple so that it wouldn’t be so labour intensive and existing judges could review cases faster.    

I.Bickovics pointed out that the Supreme Court will continue to activate “stuck” amendments to Administrative Procedure Law, to promote new amendments to Civil Procedure Law and the Investigatory Operations Law, to follow up fate of Chambers, to update issue of availability of court rulings, as well as to solve other problems updated at the Plenary Session. One of the most topical problems pointed out by Chairs of Departments and Chambers is artificial threshold of 40-years age established by legislator for the post of a judge of the Supreme Court, as young and strong lawyers are prohibited to begin work in court.

The Chief Justice also asked judges, despite big work load, to find time for self-development and to be responsive and to manage trainings for judges of lower instances.

Eriks Kalnmeiers, Prosecutor General, also participated in work of the Plenary Session, and written allocution was received from Gaidis Berzins, the Minister of Justice. Probably, when organising next Plenary Session, proposal heard in this session to invite extended number of officials to Plenary Sessions of the Supreme Court so that court proposals would be heard better, might be discussed.   

 

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