Lietuvos prokuratūros statuso raida: teisiniai istoriniai aspektai

Abstract

The article seeks to disclose the legal historical factors under whose influence the constitutional status of present prosecutors was evolving and later became entrenched in legal documents. An exceptional attention should be drawn to the fact that in the legal system of the Republic of Lithuania of 1918-1940 the legal status of prosecutors was entrenched not in constitutions but in legal acts regulating the activities of courts. According to the July 11, 1933 Law on the Structure of Courts, after the establishment of four-stage courts, the prosecutors worked at county courts, the Palace of Appeal and the Chief Tribunal of Lithuania. The prosecutor of the Palace of Appeal was in charge of the prosecutors of county courts and their assistants, and the prosecutor of the Chief Tribunal was in charge of the prosecutors of county courts and their assistants as well as of the prosecutors of the Klaipėda region. At that time the Minister for Justice was the general prosecutor of the Republic. He was in charge of the prosecutors of the Chief Tribunal, the Palace of Appeal as well as of the prosecutors of county courts and their assistants.
In 1940-1941 the law and order of the Republic of Lithuania and its prosecutor’s office were destructed. It was conditioned by the occupation of Lithuania which resulted in the legal order of an alien country. Even though the validity of some law was restored during the period of the occupation by the Nazi Germany, the Nazi occupational government limited and controlled the activities of courts and the prosecutors who worked at them. In the re-occupied Lithuania in 1944 the validity of the constitution and some laws as well as state institutions were restored. The Prosecutor’s Office renewed its activities on the same grounds.
The present article contends that the modern development of the status of prosecutors in the legal system of the Republic of Lithuania should be analyzed in the context of political and legal processes since 1988, i.e., since the period of Revival when Lithuania was endeavouring to struggle free from political and legal dependence on the USSR. While analyzing the maturing process of the concept of the legal status of prosecutors in this respect, attention should be paid to the Provisional Basic Law of the Republic of Lithuania adopted on March 11, 1990 and to the October 25, 1992 Constitution of the Republic of Lithuania on whose basis the construction of state institutions was formed. It should be stressed that the establishment of the legal status of the Prosecutor’s Office in the institutional structure of state power was one of the most complicated problems of constitutional regulation. This problem was being solved not only in the process of drafting the Constitution but also in subsequent constitutional process.