Duma to consider judicial reform

MOSCOW, January 29 (Itar-Tass) -- The Russian State Duma will consider
on Friday a package of five lawbills initiated by President Dmitry
Medvedev to reform the judiciary system and the lawbill on courts of
general jurisdiction is considered to be the main one.
Constitutional Chief Justice Valery Zorkin believes Russia must
modernize its regular courts following the ratification of Protocol 14 to
the European Convention on Human Rights that opened the way to reform the
Strasburg court.
"The ratification shall be obligatorily accompanied by modernization
of general jurisdiction courts. Without such modernization the Strasburg
court would act not as an extraordinary subsidiary institution of
supranational character, but would mostly replace supreme national
judiciary bodies," he said in an interview published by Rossiyskaya gazeta
on Friday.
The ratification of Protocol 14 and the lawbill on courts of general
jurisdiction are interlinked events, Zorkin said.
The reform plans to replace the Cassation Board of the Supreme Court
by the Board of Appeals and to change the supervising system.
"The changes will make the national judiciary more efficient. The
full-fledged institution of appeals will give the citizen the right to
have his case considered in the second instance by the same rules as in
the first one - in full, but not abridged form. There should be two
instances as a minimum. This is the principle of European justice, of
which the Russian judiciary is a part," Zorkin said.
"The third instance should be either cassation of supervision. Then
the citizen will be convinced that court judgments are inviolable," the
chief justice said.
"How can a person plan the future if legal relations are constantly
changing? Today the court rules he is right and later that he is not
right. That is inadmissible," Zorkin said, adding it is possible to revise
court judgments only once.
"This is a major problem that has to be resolved in reasonable
transition time," he said.
The finance ministry proposed to introduce new civil case appeals
system from 2012 and criminal case - from 2013. The Supreme Court
calculated the creation of civil case appeals system in federal courts of
general jurisdiction will cost 2.049 billion rubles and criminal case
appeals - 2.382 billion. The funds will go to increase the number of
judges by 1765 and federal state servants in courts by 3671.

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