BCU requests to remove barriers to access to the Register of Court Judgments

The Bar Council of Ukraine appealed to the State Court Administration to take immediate measures to eliminate violations of the right to access the court judgments by prohibiting the establishment of any restrictions to users of the Unified State Register of Court Judgments.

 

This refers to the restoration of the right to search for, review, copy and otherwise use the information from the Register. The basis for this decision was the introduction of the reCAPCHA service, when the Register is used. The limitation on number of reviews from one IP-address within a specified period of time was introduced. The rules also provide for the possibility of termination of access to the Register database for a long time.

The aforementioned service runs from May 16, 2017, and, thus, to review any decision one needs to use this feature, and after reviewing 50 decisions in a row the access to the Register is blocked.

BCU believes that such restrictions are unreasonable and disproportionate to the need for the Register data protection. Furthermore, such restrictions are contrary to the law, violate the rights and guarantees of the legal profession, and the right of access to court judgments.

In particular, according to the Law “On Access to Court Judgments” all documents entered in the Register shall be open for free around-the-clock access at the official web portal of the judicial authority in Ukraine.

The Procedure for Keeping the Register, approved by the Cabinet of Ministers, contains no provision for the restrictions for its users. In addition, the Regulation on Datasets to be Published in the Form of Open Data (approved by the Cabinet of Ministers), expressly prohibits to carry out additional authorization, pass the automated test to identify the users and establish other restrictions when browsing and downloading such data.