International standard of access to justice and subject of civil procedural law

Abstract

The current state of development of national systems of civil justice is described by the growing influence of the ideas of accessibility and efficiency of justice in civil cases and requires the harmonization of national systems with international standards of fair trial. This necessitates a rethinking of some classical provisions of the doctrine of civil procedural law to comply with modern realities. The aim of the article is to study the evolution and approaches to the modern interpretation of the international standard of access to justice in civil cases, as well as its impact on the doctrine of the subject of civil procedural law at the doctrinal level. The article is based on dialectical, histo rical-legal, system-structural, logical-legal, comparative-legal research methods, as well as methods of analysis and synthesis, autonomous and evolutionary interpretation of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). The authors advocate a broad approach to the concept of access to justice, including access to justice, access to effective remedies and access to alternative dispute resolution. Through the prism of the international standard of access to justice, the ideas of procedural centralism, based on the idea of judicial protection as the main and most effective form of protection of violated rights, and procedural pluralism, based on the provision of multiple forms of protection, the effectiveness of which is determined by the circumstances of a particular dispute. The authors substantiate the conclusion about the expediency of the perception of the idea of procedural pluralism at the level of the national legal order. A parallel is drawn between the ideas of procedural centralism and pluralism that have developed in foreign literature, and the narrow and broad concept of the subject of civil procedural law, formed in the domestic doctrine. Taking into account the autonomous interpretation of the concept of “court”, enshrined in paragraph 1 of Art. 6 of the ECHR, as well as the increasing popularization of alternative dispute resolution, provide arguments in support of a broad concept of the subject of civil procedural law, including civil litigation and alternative dispute resolution, in particular, arbitration, international commercial arbitration, mediation, etc.