The law on “electronic justice” was adopted in the second reading

The State Duma in the second reading adopted a government bill that allows participants in a trial to send petitions, statements, complaints, presentations and evidence attached to them in electronic form to the court.

The draft law was developed by the Ministry of Justice and submitted to the State Duma at the end of 2014. Appropriate amendments were proposed to be made to the Criminal Procedure, Arbitration Procedure and Civil Procedure Codes. At the suggestion of the authors of the draft law, the participants in the trial are entitled to send petitions, applications, complaints, presentations and evidence attached to them to the court in electronic form. Such documents must be endorsed with an electronic signature and submitted through a special form on the website of the court.

Judgments can also be electronic. At the same time, they will have to be signed by a judge, investigator or prosecutor with an enhanced qualified electronic signature. In the original version of the bill in paper form, it was proposed to keep the production of decisions containing state secrets. For the second reading, the deputies introduced an amendment to the text of the bill: now electronic judicial decisions will be issued in all cases, except for those containing information constituting a secret protected by federal law, affecting the security of the state, the rights and legitimate interests of minors, and also except for decisions on cases on crimes against sexual inviolability and sexual freedom of the individual. The deputies also clarified that the procedure for filling out the electronic form posted on the official website of the court is established by the Supreme Court and the Court Department under the Supreme Court within their powers.

It was assumed that the changes will come into force from the beginning of 2016, but the bill was considered in the second reading only today. The text of the draft law for the second reading does not specify the expected date of entry into force of the amendments.