Access to judicial acts by the public facilitates the realization of the right to freedom of information and a fair trial and increases accountability, transparency, and public trust in the judicial system itself.
Unfortunately, accessibility to judicial acts has been a significant challenge in Georgia for years, which was confirmed by the fact that the issue of ensuring the accessibility to decisions made at open court sessions was first considered in the so-called “Charles Michel Agreement,” of April 19 and then was defined as one of the elements for the implementation of the priorities set for Georgia by the European Commission on June 17, 2022.
Both receiving judicial acts in the form of public information and their proactive publication are substantive instruments for achieving access to judicial acts, but it is important to note that these two methods differ from each other - they are regulated differently at the normative level, and these regulations were preceded by different sequences of events in Georgia.
The present document concerns the proactive publication of judicial acts, analyzing both international experience and approaches as well as national normative framework and practice.
In the beginning, the publication provides information about the methods and scope of the report and highlights the main findings revealed. The first chapter of the report is devoted to the overview of the importance of proactive access to judicial acts, its connection with the right to privacy, and international approaches developed, while the subsequent parts analyze the existing normative framework in Georgia and reveal systemic challenges in terms of non-enforcement of legislation in practice.
Content and time scope: This document concerns the proactive publication of judicial acts and related topics. It does not cover the aspects related to requesting judicial acts in the form of public information.
Although the publication of judicial acts in the unified search system has still not resumed, IDFI still studied some functional features of the search system available at www.ecd.court.ge.
The assessments, findings, and recommendations expressed in the publication are based on the situation present as of September 30, 2024.
Research methodology: While working on the document, IDFI used the following methods and sources of information:
Analysis of international recommendations/guiding principles and experiences of EU member states – In this regard, IDFI searched for and analyzed the documents of the European Commission, the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe, and the Venice Commission relevant to the publication of judicial acts and used the recommendations/approaches reflected in these documents for assessing national legislation and practice; At the same time, IDFI sought and analyzed information on the experience of publication of judicial acts in the EU member states;
Analysis of national legislation – The document analyzes the main legal framework concerning the proactive publication of judicial acts from 2017 to September 30, 2024;
Analysis of subordinate normative acts – The document, among other sources, was based on the analysis of the decision of the High Council of Justice of September 12, 2016, and the Order of the Chairman of the Common Courts Department of March 7, 2019;
Analysis of Open Government Georgia Action Plans – The document analyzes the Open Government Georgia Action Plans adopted in different periods, which include obligations related to the publication of court decisions/acts;
Requests for and analysis of public information – The document reflects the information and results of public information requests made by IDFI on issues related to the publication of judicial acts;
Monitoring of the search system for court decisions at www.ecd.court.ge – One of the goals of the document is to assess the current situation with regard to the publication of judicial acts in practice. The webpage represented one of the sources of information from this perspective;
IDFI's previous reports and assessments regarding the accessibility of judicial decisions – IDFI has prepared and published a number of reports and assessments on the topic of access to judicial acts since 2015. These documents and the assessments found therein therefore represented an important source during the preparation of this document.
The legislative amendments of 2023-2024 established an obligation to publish not only judicial decisions but also judicial acts in general;
With the legislative amendments of May 29, 2024, the entry into legal force of the final decision of the court on a corresponding case is no longer a prerequisite for the publication of the judicial act. This is an improvement in the regulation of this issue;
In practice, real access to judicial acts remains a systemic challenge, as the High Council of Justice does not enforce legislation;
Despite the adoption of the new legislative regulation, the publication of judicial acts on the website (ecd.court.ge) has not been resumed;
The study of the acts published before May 2020 and the search functionality of ecd.court.ge indicates that the existing system contains significant shortcomings;
No information is available on whether the High Council of Justice has taken effective steps to ensure the enforcement of the legislation;
No information is available on whether the High Council of Justice has brought the subordinate normative acts regulating the proactive publication of judicial decisions into line with the legislative changes;
Within the system of common courts, only the Supreme Court of Georgia ensures proactive access to the depersonalized texts of its decisions on its electronic platform.
This publication has been produced with the assistance of the European Union, within the framework of the project "Promoting greater civic awareness and engagement in judicial reforms and facilitating increased access to justice through holistic multi-agency action". Its contents are the sole responsibility of the Institute for Development of Freedom of Information (IDFI) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the European Union.
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