Apeliacija administraciniame procese: teisės kreiptis į Lietuvos vyriausiąjį administracinį teismą ribojimo galimybės

Abstract

The article deals with the prerequisites to limit the right of appeal to the Supreme Administrative Court of Lithuania and possible methods of limitation of this right.
Limitations of the right to appeal, as one of the most important procedural guarantees, are not and can not be selfexplanatory - they are justified by the aim to ensure the reasonable balance between the necessity to eliminate possible mistakes of the court of lower instance and the proper fulfillment of a task of the court of highest instance to ensure the undivided judicial practice.
The system of administrative courts of Lithuania, as distinct from the system of courts of general jurisdiction, is twotiered. The Supreme Administrative Court of Lithuania was created as a court of ordinary appeal; therefore possibilities to limit the right of appeal to this court were not discussed more widely. However, the Supreme Administrative Court of Lithuania although functioning as a court of ordinary appeal, not as cassation court, is the last judicial instance in administrative cases, which main task is to ensure the proper application of laws and undivided judicial practice of administrative courts.
Thus functions of the Supreme Administrative Court of Lithuania can not be equated to the functions of appellate courts of general jurisdiction. The task assigned to the Supreme Administrative Court of Lithuania, enormous caseload of this court, quite high percentage of the decisions of regional administrative courts, which are left unchanged after appeal and peculiarities of procedure for hearing administrative disputes should be regarded as prerequisites to discuss seriously the possibility to fix some limitations of the right of appeal to the Supreme Administrative Court in the newly drafted Code of Administrative Procedure of Lithuania.
There are 3 traditional different methods of qualifying limitations of right to appeal – listing all the limitations of right to appeal in the law (system of statutory limitations), granting a right to the court, which has passed a decision under appeal and/or the court of higher instance to issue a leave to appeal (leave system) or combining both previously mentioned methods (mixed system). Taking into account advantages and shortcomings of those methods as well as peculiarities of disputes assigned to the jurisdiction of administrative courts in Lithuania, system of leaves to appeal to the Supreme Administrative Court of Lithuania, in the opinion of the author, would be the best solution.
As far as the Supreme Administrative Court of Lithuania is the court of ordinary appeal, grounds for granting the leave to appeal should not, in the opinion of the author, be limited to the solely questions of law. Practice of foreign states shows that “essential incorrectness” of the decision of court of lower instance may also be regarded as the ground for granting the leave to appeal, in addition to traditional grounds such as essential violation of norms of substantial or procedural law by the court of lower instance or necessity to unify the judicial practice.