RUSSIAN LAWYERS REQUEST TO DEVELOP A UNIFIED PLAN FOR RETURNING COURTS TO THE NORMAL WORK SCHEDULE

The day before, the managing partner of the Bartolius Law Office, Julius Tai, published an open letter, addressed to the Chairman of the Supreme Court V.M. Lebedev.

The document says about the need to develop a unified phased plan for all the courts of the country. Substantiating his position, the lawyer cites the words of the President of Russia, who announced his main priority - life, health and safety of people in an appeal to the citizens on May 11. At the same time, the leader of the country added that the transition from the regime of non-working days cannot be carried out simultaneously, it is necessary to act carefully step by step, given the epidemiological situation.

The problems of the situation are as follows. On the one hand, the judicial system is structured in such a way that, in the framework of one case, the parties should represent their interests in the courts of different entities (when appealing against the acts or in case of interconnectedness of the cases). On the other hand, the presence in the courts of participants of the parties has its own specifics, which can contribute to the spread of the virus.

Thus, in the first case, we have a situation in which the parties from one region will not be able to take part in a court session in another region due to restrictive measures, introduced there. This will violate the constitutional right of judicial protection of both organizations and citizens. Therefore, it is the unified system of transition to the normal regime of work in courts throughout the country that is important.

In the second case, due to the peculiarities of the interaction of the participants in the process of considering the court cases, another problem arises. Queues, waiting for a court hearing in the corridors and vestibules of the courts, staying in the small rooms during the process of the cases consideration, the inevitable exchange of the documents - all this can only increase the spread of infection and, ultimately, lead to infection of judges and the collapse of the judicial system. For this reason, it is important to develop a phased transition to the normal work of the judiciary.

The letter has already been signed by more than 60 lawyers. Among them there are both employees of the legal companies and the representatives of the law offices as the current problem concerns everyone.