The Supreme Court concluded last year with important event – the 95th anniversary of the highest court instance – the Senate of Latvia. However, year 2014 brought changes to Latvian court system – with amendments to the law “On Judicial Power”, which became effective on January 1, 2014, name of the Senate has been deleted from the title of cassation instance. Unfortunately, the legislator did not listen to appeal of the Supreme Court and the Board of Justice to preserve historical name of the Senate, which had always belonged to cassation instance in Latvia – both in the first era of Free State of Latvia in 1918-1940 and in restored Republic of Latvia.  

Due to these amendments to the law, structure and organisation of work of the Supreme Court have changed as from January 1, 2014.  

  • Cassation instance shall be the Department of Civil Cases, the Department of Criminal Cases and the Department of Administrative Cases of the Supreme Court.

Title of the cassation instance shall not contain the Senate, judgements and decisions shall be adopted under cassation procedure by correspondent department of the Supreme Court instead of the Senate. Judges of the cassation instance shall not be senators anymore, but judges of the Supreme Court and senators’ assistants shall be judges’ assistants.

  • There shall be single Chancery in the Supreme Court further

As there shall be no common structural unit – the Senate, there shall be no Chancery of the Senate. New structural unit – the Chancery of the Supreme Court – is created, which consists of three secretariats – Secretariat of Departments, Secretariat of the Chamber of Civil Cases and Secretariat of the Chamber of Criminal Cases.

With new structure, three previous chanceries, namely, the Chancery of the Senate, the Chancery of the Chamber of Civil Cases and the Chancery of the Chamber of Criminal Cases, are liquidated.

This change will not cause any difficulties to court visitors, as all three Secretariats of the Chancery will work instead of former chanceries, and telephone numbers are the same: in Secretariat of Departments – 67020364 to call secretaries of the Department of Civil Cases, 67020370 to call secretaries of the Department of Criminal Cases, 67020339 – to call secretaries of the Department of Administrative Cases, 67020347 – to call Secretariat of the Chamber of Civil Cases and 67020316 – the Secretariat of the Chamber of Criminal Cases.

Elina Majore, former Head of the Chancery of the Senate, is appointed in the office of the Head of the Chancery of the Supreme Court, and Anda Eglite, former court secretary of the Chancery of the Senate – in the office of the Head of the Secretariat of Departments. 

 

 

Information prepared by

Rasma Zvejniece, the Head of the Division of Communication of the Supreme Court

E-mail: rasma.zvejniece@at.gov.lv, telephone: 67020396, 28652211