Variability of understanding the final court judgment in the decisions of the European Court of Human Rights

The article analyses the understanding of the final court judgment in the decisions of the European Court of Human Rights. The author points out that the European Court of Human Rights uses two variants of understanding this category in its decisions. The first variant is used to assess the state-authorized breach of the principle of legal certainty and the stability of the judicial decision; the second variant is used to assess the effectiveness of specific national method to appeal the court decision which must be exhausted before applying to the European Court of Human Rights. The author studies the characteristics that are invested by the European Court of Human Rights in these variants of the final judgment concept. The European Court of Human Rights uses two approaches to the understanding of the final court judgment. The first approach is used to assess the state-authorized breach of the principle of legal certainty and of the stability of its sign as a judicial decision; and the stability of the judicial decision; the second variant is used to assess the effectiveness of specific national method to appeal the court decision which must be exhausted before applying to the European Court of Human Rights, and from the date of the decision which is used to calculate a 6-month period as a condition of admissibility. When implementing the first approach, the European Court of Human Rights relies on two criteria: it must be a decision that resolves the case, and it must be irrevocable, i.e. when there are no other conventional means of legal protection, or where the parties have exhausted such remedies, or missed deadlines, or did not use them. The European Court of Human Rights has acknowledged that the decision made in the ordinary second instance at the territorial level is final. According to the second approach, the judicial authority considers which national method of checking court decisions is an effective means of protection, which must be exhausted in order to obtain the right to appeal to the European Court of Human Rights. In this sense, the decision is treated as final after it being checked in the court of cassation (after its entry into force). However, it should be noted that, with respect to the criminal process, the reformed cassation proceedings was not subject of evaluation by the European Court of Human Rights in terms of its efficiency as a protection method. That is why it remains unclear whether it is possible to apply this approach to the understanding of the final court judgment in the criminal process. The author underlines that the present appeal proceedings in the Criminal Procedure Code of the Russian Federation can become a serious threat for the provision of the finality of the court judgment as a guarantee of legal certainty and at the same time it raises questions in terms of its efficiency as a protection method.

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