"Closed process"

Why is the third package of proposals on judicial reform introduced not by the Supreme Court, but by the president?

Last week, President Putin introduced a short bill to the Duma that would (no doubt it will pass) a number of issues related to the work of the judiciary. The project proposes, in particular, to finally introduce mandatory audio recording of court sessions, for which everything has been technically ready for a long time, and to distribute cases between judges using automated information systems.

Such proposals have long been put forward by experts, including in the recommendations of the HRC. The audio recording, which will acquire a status identical to the protocols of court sessions, will exclude accidental and intentional errors in their conduct, and the distribution of cases not at the discretion of the chairmen of the courts will make judges a little more independent from them and from everyone who uses this channel of pressure.

At the same time, this necessary draft gives rise to a number of questions and remarks. It was introduced by the president against the background of two others that were sent to the Duma by the Supreme Court in January and February, and the second of them (proposing, in particular, to exempt judges from the mandatory preparation of the reasoning part of decisions) caused a storm of criticism and even received a negative response from the government.

Why was the new draft not introduced by the Supreme Court along with the other two? Did the judges themselves cede this honorary right to the president, or was the draft introduced against the wishes of the Supreme Court?

The presidential project also proposes to raise and consolidate the status of assistant judges, giving them the right to perform certain procedural actions and legalizing the practice of drawing up draft decisions on civil cases by them. However, this logic also implies an increase in the salary of assistant judges: with the current (about 15 thousand rubles), it will be difficult to find specialists for this work. Meanwhile, the financial and economic justification for the project states that it will not require additional budget expenditures. Salary increases for assistant judges cannot be transferred to regional budgets: this is contrary to the principle of the independence of the judiciary. Here the president makes it clear that he should not have a headache?

And here's more about money. Article 230 of the Code of Civil Procedure of the Russian Federation, along with the long-awaited innovation on mandatory audio recording, is proposed to be supplemented with an inconspicuous part 5, which was absent in the previous edition: “At the request of the persons participating in the case ... and at the expense of these persons ... a copy of the protocol and (or ) a copy of the audio recording. And why, then, “at the expense of these persons,” most of whom came to court not from a good life? In this case, it would be more honest to remove from the preamble of the explanatory note the indication that the project is aimed, among other things, "to ensure citizens' access to justice."

Finally, the suggestion not to apply the general rule on audio recording in closed trials is worrisome. This may encourage judges to close dubious processes on far-fetched grounds (this practice, alas, also occurs), and in this case, the parties will receive only the same paper protocol in the old fashioned way. But if the audio recording is supposed to be issued at their request only to the parties, then what is the point of excluding it? Here, apparently, we are seeing only a continuation of the general paranoia aimed today at classifying everything and everyone.