Great Success at the European Court of Human Rights!

Our firm achieved a notable success when the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) upheld a complaint against the Czech Republic that we filed on behalf of our prominent Client in one of its restitution cases.

The ECHR found that there had been a violation of the Client's right to a fair trial under the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights (the Convention).  This was caused by the Fourth Chamber of the Czech Constitutional Court. In its decision on the Client's constitutional complaint, it failed to take into account the opinion of other chambers of Constitutional Court expressed in previous rulings. 

The ECHR emphasized its long-standing view that the Convention does not require Member States to remedy any injustices that occurred before ratification, i.e.  injustices caused by the confiscation of property by former undemocratic regimes. However, if states decide to adopt legislation to compensate victims of past injustices, such legislation must be implemented clearly and consistently to avoid legal uncertainty and ambiguity. 

The development of case law is not in itself contrary to the proper administration of justice. Even differences in case law may arise within the same lower court. However, the role of the highest judicial authority is to resolve such conflicts and not to create them. As a result, if a different decision-making practice develops within the highest judicial authority in the country, that court itself becomes a source of legal uncertainty. This undermines the principle of legal certainty and reduces public confidence in the judicial system. 

According to the ECHR, the Fourth Chamber of the Constitutional Court erred when it failed to reflect the previous case law of the First and Second Chambers, which we had expressly pointed out in our constitutional complaint. It did so without any explanation of its reasons for such an omission. The ECHR emphasized that, when a court deviates from previous case law, it requires detailed justification of such decision. 

The error of the Fourth Chamber was all the more serious because Section 23 of the Constitutional Court Act establishes a mechanism for ensuring consistency in decision-making practice. This allows a Chamber that arrives at a legal opinion that deviates from opinions expressed in earlier rulings of the Constitutional Court, to submit the matter for consideration by the Plenary Session of the Constitutional Court. However, the Fourth Chamber decided not to use this mechanism, even though it must have been aware that the First and Second Chambers had previously expressed a different legal opinion on the legal issue in question. 

In view of the above, the ECHR concluded that

• by failing to take into account the earlier established case law of the First and Second Chambers on the legal issue in question, which had also been applied by the Constitutional Court in later similar cases, and

• by failing to properly justify in its decision why it was deviating from the previous case law of the First and Second Chambers, and

• by failing to use the mechanism of referring the matter to the plenary session of the Constitutional Court pursuant to Section 23 of the Constitutional Court Act,

• the Fourth Chamber violated the principle of legal certainty and our client's right to a fair trial.

Find out more here >>

By JUDr. Ondřej Rathouský

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