The Principle of Foreseeability of Judicial Decisions as a Component of the Right to a Fair Trial

The article focuses on the principle of foreseeability of judicial decisions in civil court proceedings, as one of the components of the right to a fair trial in the Czech Republic. The principle of foreseeability of judicial decisions has to be understood as a general term including several requirements on judicial process in civil court proceedings the purpose of which is to avoid surprising decisions which can be seen as one of possible forms of violation of the right to a fair trial. Predictable decision is a decision that follows from a predictable procedure of the court in which the court proceeds strictly according to procedure code using all of the special institutions such as the duty to instruct the participants concerning their procedural rights and duties. The second requirement is to respect the legitimate expectations of the parties regarding the application of law on their case. Participants have the right to expect that their case will be decided accordingly to a legal opinion expressed in a case already decided before the courts. This aspect of the foreseeability of judicial decisions then puts high demands on the ability of courts to deal with situations in which they decide a case differently from the existing case law and thus the decision may be surprising for the participants. This article concentrates on the legal regulation of the principle of foreseeability of judicial decisions on the level of constitutional and civil procedural law. The article also deals with the legal regulation in this area in the Slovak Republic and Germany. The purpose of the article is to compare the legislation on national and international level as well as to compare Czech, German and Slovak legal regulation of the principle of foreseeability of judicial decisions.