The reprehensible and vicious practice of the manual distribution of court cases in the judiciary system.
A fundamental question has arisen, as to whether the presidents of the administrative court or the First Instance Court of General Jurisdiction of Yerevan are not exerting unlawful external interference on the judges, or whether external interference are not exerted on the presidents of the courts during the manual distribution of court cases, instead of using the computer system.
A serious question arises: Is the judge to whom the president of the court has assigned a case at their own discretion considered a proper judge?
How can we be certain that the motion for arrest filed by the investigator is not assigned to a specific judge by the President of the First Instance Court of General Jurisdiction of Yerevan, to ensure that the motion of detention is granted? How can we be certain when the Office of the Defender has received alarming-calls about the fact that the head of staff of the Court is also distributing cases?
Or is it not intentional that the President of the Administrative Court is forming five-judge panels for cases such as registering or not the candidates elected during the local self-governing body elections, or for cases related to the legality of normative acts?
Moreover, the Office of the Human Rights Defender is continuing to receive alarming-calls about the fact that the President of the Administrative Court is distributing the cases with violations. Similar alarming-calls have been received in relation to the First Instance Court of General Jurisdiction of Yerevan.
Moreover, there are continuous alarming-calls that the presidents of the courts are discriminating between the judges, resulting the unacceptable phenomenon of the dependency of the judges from the presidents of the courts. The presidents of the court are not observing (usually) the alphabetical order of the surnames of the judges for the distribution of cases. In another case, the principle of random distribution of court cases was not observed.
The manual distribution of cases by the presidents of the courts are conducted without adherence to specific criteria. Before submitting an application, the Human Rights Defender had sent inquiries to the presidents of the courts, however none of them brought forth evidence proving the contrary. Others provided contradictory information.
This practice is extremely dangerous to the rights to a fair trial, personal liberties, privacy and other constitutional rights. Through this practice, the constitutional right of every person to a fair trial by an independent and impartial court is simply nullified.
In relation to this issue, the Human Rights Defender has submitted an application to the Constitutional Court, and has published an ad-hoc report.
However, this unacceptable;e situation, together with its dangerous precedents, continues even after the Defender’s application to the Constitutional Court and the publication of the ad-hoc report.
Mr. Arman Tatoyan
The Human Rights Defender of Armenia
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