“Judgment of the court makes the dry law alive and understandable to man”, said Ivars Bickovics, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, at the press conference when opening the new project on the website of legal acts Likumi.lv. Henceforth, on the website Likumi.lv, the legal acts will be supplemented with references to rulings of the Supreme Court or Senate, in which findings expressed by the Court may be useful in deciding other cases and interpreting legal provisions. The articles of the legal acts will also contain information on the judgments of the Constitutional Court. The project was implemented by the official publisher of “Latvijas Vestnesis” in cooperation with the Constitutional Court and the Supreme Court.

The case-law findings of the Supreme Court are now available attached to specific articles of legal acts. The Chief Justice of the Supreme Court pointed out that these findings will serve as a commentary or an explanation of a particular legal provision applied in a specific court case: “It will be like reading a dry wording of the law, then putting a comma and continuing with “for example””. By giving examples from life situations dealt with in court cases, the law becomes more understandable. The Supreme Court attributes great importance to the legal education of society, and this is also accomplished by this Likumi.lv project. The Chief Justice of the Supreme Court did not hide the fact that there are also some professional interests involved, namely, if a person could get acquainted with a possible court response or judgment or decision, perhaps the need to go to court would also disappear.

The findings of the Supreme Court for publishing on the website Likumi.lv will be selected by the Division of Case-law and Research of the Supreme Court. In addition, it should be reminded that findings themselves do not constitute case-law – the case-law is made up of Senate’s rulings. In order to understand an interpretation of the legal provision, it is not always enough to read the findings available on Likumi.lv. In order to make use of the case-law finding, it is also necessary to familiarize oneself with a court decision in whole and, perhaps, special attention must be paid to the factual circumstances of the case on the basis of which a particular finding is formed. Likumi.lv also provides an access to specific decision of the Senate placed on the website of the Supreme Court.

The Chief Justice of the Supreme Court also pointed out at that along with the new way of access to the Senate's case-law, the section “Judicature” on the Supreme Court website will not lose its significance, in which a greater number of case-law rulings, systematized according to different classifications, will still be available. If currently findings of the Supreme Court rulings are attached to 1000 legal provisions on Likumi.lv, then the number of systematized rulings on the Supreme Court website is approximately three times greater. 

The press conference for the opening of novelty on website Likumi.lv on March 13 in the Supreme Court premises was attended by Ineta Ziemele, President of the Constitutional Court, Ivars Bickovics, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, Raivis Kronbergs, State Secretary of the Ministry of Justice, and Daina Abele, Chair of the Board of SIA “Latvijas Vestnesis”.

 

Information prepared by

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

E-mail: rasma.zvejniece@at.gov.lv, telephone: +371 67020396, +371 28652211