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ICT AND FAIR TRIAL

– Legal barriers, which may be related to physical access to legal knowledge, but also to the readability and clarity of legal rules.
ICT could certainly provide solutions to help overcome these obstacles.
First, costs can be reduced, e.g. those related to travel, or to the expedition
of documents and requests for documents, which can now be transmitted
or downloaded online. ICT also facilitates access to legal rules, legal information online, and referral forms for jurisdictions or downloadable applications for legal aid, and thus plays a role in the simplification of access
to law. Similarly, projects such as creating a portal for litigants, and the
establishment of “Point Visio-Public” access booths, which allow litigants
to communicate from a distance with registries, all improve access to the
law even if they may also cause some difficulties, as discussed below.
For judges at the European Court, the simplification of proceedings is
perceived as a means of ensuring an effective right of access to court, as
advocated in 1979 in Airey, and so the use of ICT is fully consistent with
this aim.

2. Access to the judge
Similarly, in terms of the right of access to the judge, which is the right to
institute legal proceedings10, ICT provides some interesting improvements,
making access easier, and also saving time and money. The added value
of the use of ICT has been demonstrated by the experiment conducted
on tax litigation from 200511 in some administrative jurisdictions, which
foresaw paperless proceedings, such as filing a claim, introductory submissions, briefs and supporting documents, as well as the electronic transmission of the notification of the judgment. Following the success of this
experiment, it was not only prolonged but also extended to other litigation.12 Similar experiments are also underway in the civil courts.13
It is true that many convictions by the European Court will no longer
be justified in the future, if the use of new technology develops. For
example, there were several convictions14 over actions that were inadmissible because of errors committed by lower courts or registries which had
not submitted the relevant documents within the legal deadlines. In such
cases, the Court considers that the inadmissibility of the action constitutes
10. Kutiæ v. Croatia, No. 48778/99, § 25, ECHR 2002-II.
11. Decree No. 2005-222 of 10 M.h 2005, Administrative Law, 2005, Th. PIETTE-COUDOL
Comm. 106; Order of 11 May 2007, Administrative Law, 2007, Th. PIETTE-COUDOL Comm.
141; Decree No. 2009-1649 of 23 December 2009.
12. Disputes relating to acts adopted concerning military personnel by the Minister of
Defence, Order of February 3, 2009.
13. G. SABATER, « Nouvelles technologies et systeme judiciaire. Le deploiement de la
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communication dans les juridictions judiciaires », JCP, G, 2008, I223; H. CROZE, « Le progres
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technique de la procedure civile », JCP G, 2009, I108.
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14. E.g. Leoni v. Italy, No. 43269/98, 26 October 2000, ECHR; Boulougouras v. Greece,
No. 66294/01, 27 May 2004, ECHR.

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