1 March, 2021
The Judicial Council has approved the standards for time limits of adjudication of cases submitted by all Latvian courts for 2021.
This has been done in accordance with the 2020 amendments to Section 271 of the Law “On Judicial Power”, which stipulates that a chair of each court has to submit the standard of time limits for adjudication of cases for approval at the Judicial Council by 1 February each year.
The Secretariat of the Judicial Council consolidated all the standards submitted by the chair into a single, transparent document. It is available on the website of the Supreme Court, section on the Judicial Council "Documents".
This standard varies from court to court. For civil cases in the first instance, it is 4–12 months, in regional courts 4–6 months, in the Senate - 6–18 months. For criminal cases in the first instance, it is 4–12 months, in regional courts 2–10 months, in the Senate 3–12 months. For administrative cases in the first instance, it is 7.37 months, in regional courts 6.5 months, in the Senate 6-18 months.
At the same time, it was concluded that it was necessary to work on the development of new guidelines of the Judicial Council in order to facilitate the collection of meaningful, easily transparent and comparable data on the most relevant categories of cases and the planned progress of adjudication of cases.
This will facilitate the transparency of court proceedings and the management of time limits in courts, as well as allow each court client to reasonably count on the expected length of court proceedings.
Information prepared by
Rasma Zvejniece, the Head of the Division of Communication of the Supreme Court
E-mail: rasma.zvejniece@at.gov.lv, telephone: +371 67020396, +371 28652211