Original scientific paper
On development of legal remedies for protection of the right to a hearing within reasonable time Affirmation or capitulation in the battle for an efficient judiciary?
Alan Uzelac
; Faculty of Law, University of Zagreb, Croatia
Abstract
In up today’s case law of the European Court for Human Right, the largest number of judgments declaring violation of rights guaranteed by the European Convention for Protection of Human Rights, with regards to Croatia, was related to violation of the right to a hearing within a reasonable time and right to an efficient legal remedy. When considering the ladder, we should note that the most violations with regard to Art. 13 of the Convention also related to non-existence of efficient means for suppression of lengthy procedures. For that reason, this paper deals with European Court’s standpoint on efficiency of domestic means for the length of procedure as well as with development of those means. The means developed under the influence of Strasbourg court's case law, and partly for inner reasons. In the article, the development of the system of legal remedies for protection of the right to a hearing within a reasonable time is analysed – starting from the constitutional claim from Art. 59 para. 4 of the Constitutional Act on Constitutional Court of 1999, via new Art. 63 of the same Act of 2002 until the new Chapter III of Courts Act of 2005. Besides general questions and doubts regarding the relation of constitutional law protection system (constitutional claim) and the new legal remedy (application for protection of right to a hearing within a reasonable time), a special attention is given to practical functioning and analyse of available statistics on use of new remedies. The new system of legal remedies for length of procedure is analysed from the perspective of the European court’s case law announcing, based on new judgments, a possible development in the future. The author warns us at the trend of expansive growth of the number of cases as well as the paid fees for the length of the court proceedings (the number of cases more than doubled yearly in the first three years). Based on these indications, a worst possible scenario of the future events is developed. It is shown that such a scenario, although not being completely feasible, is based on concrete data and indicators. Lastly, it is concluded that the system of legal remedies for protection of a right to a hearing within a reasonable time, although might be useful for solving isolated and individual cases, cannot be an adequate substitute for immense structural reforms.
Keywords
European convention for protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms; legal remedies; hearing within reasonable time; constitutional claim; application for protection of right to a hearing within a reasonable time
Hrčak ID:
93103
URI
Publication date:
3.5.2012.
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