Under the Joint Project on “Strengthening the Institutional Capacity of Court of Cassation”, a second online meeting was held on 11 January 2021 with the Information Technologies (IT) Director of the European Court of Human Rights and the Head of HUDOC Unit following up the first meeting held on 24 January 2020 in Strasbourg. The HUDOC database providing access to the case law of the European Court, to the decisions and reports of the European Commission of Human Rights and to the resolutions of the Committee of Ministers plays a fundamental role in the dissemination of the European Court’s case law.
It is aimed within the scope of the Project to achieve the Court of Cassation’s objective of making its decisions publicly available through a more modern and user-friendly system. Having made all its decisions publicly available since 2015 and sharing over five million decisions on its website, the Court of Cassation is intensifying its activities in line with its constitutional duty to ensure that the law is applied equally across the country by providing easier access to its decisions.
In the meeting, information and experience were shared on digital justice, the software programmes which may be preferred, the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in the judiciary, and the current developments in the field of informatics.
In his opening remarks, Dr Mustafa Saldırım, the Deputy Secretary General of the Turkish Court of Cassation highlighted that an intense effort had been observed in transforming digital justice all over the world especially following the COVID-19 pandemic and stated that no judicial system wanted to stay out of this transformation. Afterwards, Mr Francis Doherty, IT Director of the European Court explained how the HUDOC platform works with its current and future aspects and shared some advices, and Mr Stefano Palermiti, the Head of the HUDOC Unit made a presentation on the HUDOC system.
The success of the Court’s HUDOC system sets a unique example for high courts seeking to make their decisions available to public.
The meeting deemed to be a fruitful event in terms of the objectives and success of the Project was organised by the Council of Europe under the European Union-Council of Europe Joint Project “Strengthening the Institutional Capacity of Court of Cassation”.
