Reforms in judgement system

Serious reforms are expected in the judicial and legal system

The new decree of the Acting President is aimed at ensuring genuine independence of courts, strengthening guarantees on protection of rights freedom of citizens and enhancement of access to justice.

The Acting President of Uzbekistan Shavkat Mirziyoyev signed the Decree of the President “On Measures to Further Reform Judicial and Legal System, Strengthen Guarantees for Solid Protection of Rights and Freedoms of Citizens” on October 21. As mentioned in the official comment to the document, distributed by UzA, the Decree marks transition of the state policy in this area to an entirely new level.

The Decree defines three main priorities: to ensure genuine independence of the judicial power; to strengthen guarantees for solid protection of rights and freedoms of citizens; and to enhance the access level to justice.

The most important tasks of judicial, law-enforcement and controlling authorities are defined in the Decree:

• To ensure strict observance of norms set forth in the Article 112 of the Constitution of the Republic of Uzbekistan concerning independence of judges, their subjection only to the law and principle of unavoidability of responsibility for intrusion into the activities of judges concerning administration of justice;
• To protect rights and legitimate interests of citizens, to take all necessary actions in response to offenses, inadmissibility of red-tapery and violation of the rule for examination of applications submitted by natural persons and legal entities.
• To ensure openness and transparency by timely bringing relevant information to the notice of the general public, to raise interaction efficiency with civic institutions, mass media and the population;
• To identify and eliminate causes of systemic deficiencies and violations by improvement of law-enforcement practices and legislation in force, to introduce advanced scientific and technical means as well as information and communication technologies;
• To strengthen departmental control, prevention, to prevent abuse and other offenses among officials, to carry out qualitative improvement of staff composition, introduction of modern personnel selection mechanisms ensuring employment of the most qualified candidates.

In order to ensure genuine independence of the judicial power, the prestige of the profession, formation of highly qualified and efficient judiciary establishment, the term of office for judges was revised for the first time. Thus, the procedures for appointment (election) of judges for an initial five years and the next ten-year term, and subsequently for an indefinite period of continuance in office were introduced.

In addition to this decree, starting from April 1, 2017, a number of amendments shall be made in the criminal, criminal procedural, civil procedural and other legislations aimed at improving justice administration efficiency giving due consideration to and ensuring the priority of human rights and freedoms, strengthening guarantees for fair and timely judicial proceedings, equitableness and humanity of punishment.

In particular, the criminal penalty in the form of arrest shall be abolished with expansion of applicable alternative types of punishment which are not related to imprisonment. Thus, one of the stringent forms of punishment shall be eliminated from criminal penalties, which is the logical continuation of the policy on liberalization of criminal penalties, broad application of progressive forms and methods of educational and corrective influences on offenders.

Within the framework of strengthening the legal guarantees on protection of human rights and freedoms during criminal proceedings, to increase the efficiency of criminal case investigations, the retention period shall be reduced from 72 to 48 hours for persons suspected in commitment of a crime, and from 1 year to 7 months – maximum period for restrictive measures in the form of detention and home arrest, as well as preliminary investigation of criminal cases.  On the one hand, introduction of these measures will ensure protection of citizens against cases of unjustified restriction of their freedom and will increase responsibility and efficiency of the agency of inquiry and investigation, on the other hand.

In the framework of expanding “Habeas Corpus” writ, the powers of prosecutors on authorization of investigatory actions, such as arrest of postal and telegraph items and performance of exhumations shall be transferred to the competence of judicial authorities. These changes, to the fullest extent, comply with the Constitution and the generally recognized principles and norms of international law which establish that personal rights and freedoms are inviolable and no one may, without a court order, deprive or limit them.

In addition, courts are granted with the capability to apply alternative measures of restraint in the event of a refusal in application of restrictive measures in the form of detention or house arrest.

In particular, it should be noted separately that there is such a new development as the abolition of the concept on re-admittance of criminal cases for further investigation by the court aimed at improving the performance and efficiency of justicement, elimination of groundless delaying in final decision lead time on cases and strengthening the role of courts in criminal proceedings.

The introduced measure on reduction of the period from 3 years to 1 year during which judicial decisions could be reviewed in civil cases under review procedures intended to ensure sustainability of civil law relations, protection of rights and legal interests of participants in the civil practice.

For the purposes of existing review system of legal validity and justness of judicial decisions as well as elimination of unnecessary intermediary instances that negatively affect the time period and efficiency of enforcement proceedings, the decree provides for elimination of duplicating instances on reviewal of civil and criminal cases, in the exercise of supervisory powers, by regional level courts, with the exception of the powers of respective presidents of courts and prosecutors on lodging a protest in the exercise of supervisory powers. In addition, the duplicating powers of the Plenum of Supreme Court under supervision hearing shall be eliminated.

Elimination of excessive and duplicating instances allows to prevent repeated examination of cases by the same court with supervisory authority, ensure finality and stability of judicial decisions and, as a consequence, to increase the level of public confidence in the courts.

The decree also provides for the establishment of regional courts of appeal in the system of commercial courts which aim to eliminate the powers of regional economic courts on the revision of their own decisions.

The important provision of the decree which determines strengthening of judicial power independence foundation is the transfer of logistics and financial support functions and powers of the justice department under the courts of general jurisdiction to the Supreme Court. This measure creates an additional guarantee of independence of courts and nonintervention in their activities.

Herewith, the Supreme Court, Supreme Economic Court, General Prosecutor’s Office and other concerned departments are entrusted to prepare reasonable proposals based on best international practices , by 1st July 2017, concerning:

• Improvement of advanced professional training system for judicial and public prosecution officers and training of senior executives;
• Strengthening legal protection of minors during execution of legal proceedings, liberalization of criminal penalties as well as revision of time period and basis for expiry and clearing of criminal records;
• Expansion of reconciliation institute in criminal proceedings in view of its compliance with such age-old traditions of Uzbek people as kindness and mercy. This regulation will free sincerely repentant citizens from criminal liability who recovered the caused damages for committed offense against the law;
• Decriminalization of certain formal elements of a definition of crime that do not pose great danger to society;
• Expansion of the list of crimes for which the criminal case could be initiated solely at the request of the complainant;
• Improvement of justice administration efficiency by introduction of modern forms and methods of electronic judicial and enforcement proceedings and advanced mechanisms ensuring access to justice. Realization of the initiative will serve for improvement of judicial work efficiency as well as consistent implementation of principles of openness, transparency and access to justice for the public, in full compliance with the modern stage development requirements of the Republic within the framework of the Law “On Electronic Government”.

Additionally, in order to enhance the role of legal departments under governmental agencies in ensuring legitimacy and effective implementation of ongoing reforms in the country, specific measures are provided to further improve their performance.

The program of complex measures was approved under the resolution to implement the identified priorities and practical implementation of new regulations, providing for realization of 45 practical measures under 8 top priority areas of development of the judicial and legal system.

In the framework for implementation of the Resolution, amendments and additions shall be introduced to the Constitution of the Republic of Uzbekistan, Criminal code, Code of Criminal Procedure, Code of Civil Procedure, Code of Commercial Procedure and a number of other legislative acts. For the purposes of improvement and strengthening of the system of protection of the rights and freedoms of citizens, the adoption of special laws is planned on the basis of generally accepted international standards including the Laws “On Protection of Victims, Witnesses and Other Participants in Criminal Proceedings”, “On Mediation”, “On Administrative Proceedings” and others.

As it is noted in the comments, the implementation of this policy document will allow raising the activity of the judicial system of the country to a qualitatively new level, ensuring protection of rights, freedoms and lawful interests of citizens as well as significant strengthening of public confidence in justice.

Source: “Gazeta.uz”      29 025