(R)EVOLUTION: THE JUDICIAL SYSTEM IN THE TURBULANCE OF THE 1990S

The formation of the national court instance system began shortly after March 11, 1990. However, recent Soviet heritage, the impulse to turn to the legacy of the First Republic, and the intense dynamics of the events at the beginning of the restoration of independence formed the unique circumstances of this process. The object of this research – the court instance system (instance de recours) – can be defined as a structure of the organization of courts, formed for two purposes: the implementation of justice in a specific case; and the development of a harmonious legal system. The fundamental purpose of the instance system is control over court decisions, which creates conditions for verifying a lower court’s decision, judgment, or ruling in a higher instance. In the pre-occupation period, the work of general jurisdictional courts was based on prescriptive procedural legislation, and before the loss of independence, the first republic had a three-instance, fourtiered court system formed by the judicial reform implemented in 1933. On June 15, 1940, the evolution of the legal system of the First Republic of Lithuania was interrupted by an act of external aggression. The purpose and place of the court in the system of government changed, and the Soviet model of the organization of courts of first instance and cassation instance came into force. The half-century-long Soviet occupation kept both the model of the judicial system and the totality of its operating principles essentially unchanged. Throughout this period, the suppression, opposition, and annihilation of historical memory resulted in the heritage or principles of the Western European tradition becoming largely unknown in the judicial system. On the day of restoration of independence, Lithuania decided to accept Soviet-era law until the relevant laws were adopted. It was understood that would not be possible to quickly create a qualitatively new model of the legal system. After the restoration of independence, it was recognized that changes in the instance system must be in line with the traditions of democratic European states. On January 30, 1991, a working group was formally set up to prepare the Law on the Judiciary and the Status of Judges. Informally, however, work on this issue between researchers and practitioners had begun much earlier. It was decided to choose the 1933 judicial organization as the starting point for the reform of the judicial system. On February 6, 1992, the new Law on Courts was adopted. The new court instance system repeated Lithuania’s interwar experience. In the new model, first instance cases are divided between two courts, and the appellate instance is also concentrated in two appellate courts. The Supreme Court of Lithuania is provided as an exclusive cassation instance. The period from 1990–1992 was only the first step in Lithuania’s implementation of the new court instance system