Volume 15 (2022): Edition 1 (October 2022)

Although the significance of an individual constitutional complaint mechanism is mostly associated with the national constitutional protection of human rights, it is a no less significant remedy in the context of the international human rights protection system. Individual constitutional complaints can be considered an effective domestic legal remedy to be exhausted before applying to the European Court of Human Rights (the ECtHR). However, the answer to the question of whether proceedings in a constitutional justice institution fall within the scope of such domestic remedies is very complex and may vary from case to case. Whether it will be required to exhaust an individual constitutional complaint procedure before filing a complaint with the ECtHR will largely depend on the legal system of the state and the scope of the powers of the constitutional justice institution.

This article aims to assess whether the individual constitutional complaint mechanism operating in Lithuania could be recognised an effective remedy to be exhausted before applying to the ECtHR.

The need to compensate for material and moral damage caused to a person is a constitutional principle, which is implemented in Article 6.272 of the Civil Code of the Republic of Lithuania, establishing the non-contractual liability of the State for damage caused by pre-trial investigation officers, a prosecutor, a judge, or a court (hereinafter referred to as the “Officials”). Furthermore, Article 6.272(4) of the Civil Code provides that if the damage is caused by the intentional actions of the Officials, the State shall acquire the right of recourse in accordance with the procedure laid down by law. In Lithuania, the number of cases of compensation for damage caused by unlawful acts of the Officials is increasing, while the recourse procedure has not yet been applied even though 20 years have passed since the above-mentioned rule of the Civil Code came into force. The authors of the article search for the answer why the recourse procedure is not applied in practice by analysing the legal regulation of the regression and the content of intentional fault using theoretical, comparative, linguistic, historical, jurisprudence analysis, and related legal methods.

The paper discusses the problem of non-recognition of civil confiscation orders in Europe. Despite the breakthrough in international cooperation in the freezing and confiscation of crime proceeds in the criminal law domain, the formal approach in some European states destroys the potential of one of the most advanced instruments against crime proceeds—civil confiscation orders. The study offers a comparative analysis of the concepts of the confiscation of crime proceeds within and outside the frameworks of criminal proceedings. The analysis serves as the basis for the discussion of whether there is reasonable ground for the formal distinction between these concepts.

The author concludes that the formal elimination of the civil confiscation orders has no substantial background. The analysis of both extended powers of confiscation in the criminal law domain in Europe and the Lithuanian Law on Civil Confiscation in the light of principles of proportionality and fair proceedings shows that civil confiscation regimes outside the framework of criminal proceedings may provide adequate safeguards to those provided in the confiscation regimes within criminal proceedings.

The paper contributes to the discussion that is relevant to any European state that considers enacting or amending the civil confiscation legal framework or the legal regulation on recognising and executing crime proceeds confiscation orders. The paper elaborates on the approach that could enhance cooperation among European states in the prevention of organised crime.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, administrative courts were established one after another in European countries. In this article, scholars review the origins of administrative justice in three Baltic states – Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia – when all three states declared their independence. In the article, the authors reveal the legal regulation of administrative justice, the procedural provisions of judicial review, the system of institutions that supervised the legality of administrative acts, and their jurisdiction during the period from 1918 to 1940 in the Baltic states.

The EU State Aid regulation is based on the premise that the market and the entities within it must operate independently without additional unnecessary intervention by the state. In other words, state intervention must be kept to a minimum. Unjustified aid to one or another entity may distort the situation in the market and lead to a number of undesirable consequences, including market advantage acquired by the aided entity. The willingness of the state and its institutions to help those who face difficulties may be understandable, but not always justified. However, the prohibition on a state and its institutions to grant aid is not unconditional and, in some cases, may cause serious undesired consequences. The coronavirus disease (COVID-19), which hit EU member states in the first half of 2020, led to a re-thinking of the rules in force and a broadening of the scope for state aid exemptions. However, there are a number of questions about the nature of the EU State Aid regulation and its correlation with COVID-19 outbreak-conditioned decisions. The article analyses the state aid granting practices across the EU (including the UK) related to COVID-19. It covers approximately two- year period—from the start of the pandemic in Europe to March 2022.

Under normal circumstances, the medical negligence of doctors in most European (continental) states is assessed within the limits of criminal liability under the criminal laws of each state, without exception in the case of COVID-19 or another pandemic. The author raises the question of whether doctors, in the performance of their duties and in the provision of treatment services during the COVID-19 pandemic, deserve any relief from their liability due to errors or negligence in the performance of their duties that have resulted in the consequences of damage to health or life loss of patients. The article provides an analysis of the special laws created for such situations and adopted in Poland and Italy while presenting the shortcomings and advantages of such legal regulation and distinguishing the discussion issues raised by legal scholars and practitioners of the abovementioned states. The author criticises the attempt to adopt a similar legal act in Lithuania and at the same time proposes to discuss the possibility of changing the existing legal regulation and setting limits on the criminal liability of doctors during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The pandemic affected the access to justice situation in terms of the never rapid shift to digitalisation of legal services, and in this article, we evaluate whether artificial intelligence (AI) and its state-of-the-art technologies like machine learning and human language technologies have the potential to improve access to legal services. For this purpose, we not only examine and identify problematic areas, but also share the empirical data and insights of the practical application of AI technologies, especially human language technologies. In the first part of the article, we explore how the internet has created the foundations for a new paradigm of society including institution law. The second part of the article is devoted for analysis of challenges for access to justice in post pandemic world. In the third part, we elaborate on questions about technical feasibility, legal and moral acceptability of the digitalisation of legal services. Then follows the case analysis of the practical application of human language technologies in legal domain.