Serbian Justice and European Court for Human Rights

Abstract

The trust in justice is very important for the establishing of the rule of law. Very often Serbian citizens are ready to say that Serbian justice system is not impartial, that is corrupted and under the political influence. In that sense it is always good to take a look on the decisions of the European Court for Human Rights when it comes to decisions of Serbian courts. The author of this text presents some statistical data of the work of the European Court. The question is how often the European court accepts applications of Serbian citizens, as a matter of fact, how often judges from Strasbourg say that Serbian courts made some kind of a mistake. It is true that people from Serbia very often go to the Court of Strasbourg, but on the other side, it is also true that European Court for Human rights very rarely concludes that Serbian courts were unjustfull in their decisions. In less than 250 cases in the period from 2006 to 2022 European Court of Human Rights adjudicated on the different way that Serbian courts did it. So, the Court from Strasbourg gave some kind of legitimacy to Serbian courts. Jovan Ćirić, the justice of Serbian Constitutional Court speaks about that in this article. He also presents some of the most interesting decisions of the Court of Strasbourg regarding Serbian justice system.