Challenges of economic crisis to independence of judiciary

This article identifies and analyzes the challenges of economic crisis of 2008–2012 in Lithuania posed to the main elements of the principle of judicial independence: independence of individual judges and institutional independence of judiciary. This article aims to assess the impact of the economic crisis to the judicial independence by verifying the hypothesis that the guarantees of judicial independence (and human right to judicial defense) are diminished during the economic recession. The main conclusion of the article is that this hypothesis is confirmed in part, i.e. apart from the typical threats to the judicial independence, the economic crisis also opened some opportunities to optimize the judiciary activities increasing efficiency of judicial defense