The media noise around the forthcoming specialized criminal court is getting louder with the obvious aim to generate public support for this concept. We see the profile of a well known group of paid or expecting-payment clappers whose bass growling of endorsement indicates appetite rather than authority. Joining the ongoing debate is a free jump into a well set trap.
A specialized court cannot be extraordinary and cannot administer justice under a singular substantive and procedure law. The adjective “specialized” misleads the attention towards the object of work but exactly that work cannot be beyond the common legal rails because it would be inadmissibly extraordinary. The specifics of a specialized court are just in the opposite direction- in its internal organization and mechanism of action. It will simply have at its disposal normal premises with more and better qualified judges, with sufficient staff and adequate professional time to decide each case. This will be a “first class” judicial train but running on the common legal rails.
How do you call a court which enjoys normal premises, with many competent judges of high integrity, with sufficient staff and adequate time to hear every case under the acting laws? This is not a specialized court, this is simply a NORMAL court- what all others in the republic should be like. Regretfully the government cannot provide normal conditions for work to all courts- just look at the stable called Sofia regional court. They can afford the luxury of only one normal court against crimes which threaten and compete with statehood but they name it “specialized” to prevent the public realizing the miserable truth that it will be the only one normal court. The word “specialized” is a veil, a smoke screen. The responsibility is not with the current government but with the whole political elite after 1990 which created the current marsh. And with all of us who watched and tolerated them.
If it all was about something else i.e. about some exclusiveness of the provisions which the new court would apply- the government should have long ago made the most logical and simplest step to insure itself against mistakes and future attacks- it should have asked the Constitutional court under art. 149 s.1 p.1 to give a binding interpretation of art.119 of the Constitution for the difference between specialized and extraordinary courts. Why haven’t they done so wasting almost a year- they would have got the answer up to now? Well, because this is not the problem they face- they are not going to do anything special or extraordinary but shall only establish something normal- unfortunately a single normal one. Yet everyone has the right of access to the best quality justice.
September 2010
Braykov’s Legal Office