The Quality of Justice in Criminal, Arbitrazh, Civil and Administrative Cases: Comparison by Individual Parameters

Based on statistics and survey results the author highlights that there is a markedly lower quality of criminal justice as compared with arbitrazh (commercial) disputes. The comparison is based on six indicators: the distribution of cases among judges, the capabilities of the information system, the policy of the use of telecommunications technologies, the observance of procedural deadlines, adherence of the court to timelines and the use of mediation procedures. The selected parameters have been developed by the European Commission for the Efficiency of Justice and reflect not only the organizational but also the procedural features of each of the types of proceedings under consideration.

The author supports the concept of judicial law, and, therefore, the study is devoted to finding unreasonable differences in the quality of justice in some types of justice. These include: automated distribution of cases in courts of general jurisdiction which is affected by the will of operators to the extent in which it is implemented in arbitrazh courts; lack of necessary “e-justice” tools in "Pravosudie" Stat Automated System (GAS "Pravosudie"); insufficient use of video-conferencing by the courts of general jurisdiction, unwillingness to conduct an electronic case and remote formalization with cases; continous consideration of criminal cases in comparison with arbitrazh and other cases; disrespect of the courts of general jurisdiction for the time of the proceedings’ participants; refusal of the court to promote amicable settlement of criminal disputes. Fully aware of all the differences between criminal and arbitrazh proceedings on many grounds: both the existence (or absence) of formalized pretrial proceedings and qualitative characteristics of the parties and their representatives and the specific weight of the cases dealt with by the courts in the total scope of all legal cases in the country, the author nevertheless considers that according to the indicators applied by the European Commission for the Efficiency of Justice all types of domestic proceedings are still comparable, and the apparent differences in accessibility and quality of justice are not unavoidable. 

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