European Court of Human Rights and Lithuanian courts: the effectiveness of dialogue

Interaction between national courts and the European Court of Human Rights is characterised by a hierarchical dimension (due to the possibility of reviewing the decisions of national courts by the Strasbourg Court) and a dialogue dimension. From the perspective of a national court, dialogue means, first of all, efforts to avoid (in advance) human rights violations in the future and, consequently, the correction of the aforementioned violations of the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms. From the positions of the Strasbourg Court, dialogue encourages this court to pay greater regard to the positions of national courts and different legal traditions of states and to adopt well-balanced, well-informed, and convincing decisions. The adoption of Protocol No 16 to the Convention, consolidating the possibility of direct judicial dialogue, laid a sounder and more realistic foundation for dialogue between judges. Certain challenges to dialogue are raised by the duration of proceedings at the European Court of Human Rights, as legal problems lose some of their relevance in a long term. The implementation of the doctrine of the margin of appreciation and the doctrine of the Convention as a living instrument causes additional difficulties to a national court due to which it sometimes becomes complicated to fully assess the influence of the case-law of the European Court of Human Rights on a case considered by the court. In addition, a national judge must also take account of the common tendencies in European states, international documents, and customary international law; therefore, it is necessary to balance among the possible risks of violating human rights and not to get lost among the assessment criteria. This report examines the role of the Supreme Court of Lithuania in developing dialogue between this court and the Strasbourg Court through jurisprudence. An analysis is presented of the specific areas facing the application of the Convention and examples are provided of how the Supreme Court of Lithuania seeks to implement the standards of the Convention in its jurisprudence. The cases are discussed when the Supreme Court of Lithuania reopens the proceedings after the Strasbourg Court states the violation of the Convention and by what measures it seeks to correct the established violations (most often by awarding an additional compensation)