'No legal justification and reasoning': Armenian lawyer critical of 'merger plan' to abolish Constitutional Court

Hermine Mikayelyan

In an interview with Tert.am, a member of the Chamber of Advocates criticized the proposed constitutional reform for abolishing the high court and merging it with the Court of Cassation to create a new judicial body (i.e. - a Supreme Court).

Yervand Varosyan said he treats the idea, proposed by the government commission on constitutional reforms, as a politically motivated move "lacking any legal justification and reasoning".

The lawyer also expressed regret that the Constitutional Court's real activity remains largely unknown to the public despite its past history of 25 years. Varosyan recalled that the high court handled scores and hundreds of cases to which the Cassation Court was not able to offer a solution. Meantime he noted that even today the Constitutional Court is often required to "correct the similar errors" by the lower judicial body.

"The legal consequences will be grave indeed in case of the courts' unification, as issues of the kind will remain unresolved and hanging in the air. Hence, naturally, we will not not have another additional tribunal expected to settle similar cases. Instead, we  will be creating some hybrid system for ourselves," Varosyan he said, warning of the imminent state security hazards.

According to the advocate, the people behind the kind of decisions - made in the past two and a half  -years, are mainly "adventurous individuals" lacking long experience and practice.

"Those people have not worked with the legal system at least a single day to have the right understanding of what they are doing. Those in the commissions are theoreticians, people who have absolutely nothing to do with law," he added.

Asked to comment on the frequently cited "American model" in the light of many advocates' repeated claims that Armenia is a Council of Europe member state and part of the European family, Varosyan noted that the Anglo-Saxon legal system is tailored to the mechanisms functional in those countries (as opposed to Armenia which applies the diametrically opposite principles). "Ours is modeled after the continental legal system, which is accepted in the vast majority of European countries. So we do not have to take and adjust everything to a country whose legal system is not generally similar to our own," he added.

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