Dreptul la un proces echitabil
The right to a fair trial

Summary/Abstract: The right of persons to a fair trial, laid down in art. 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights, has a meaning of a special juridical nature, consisting in a complex of procedural guarantees in the absence of which any other fundamental right would have a purely declarative value, while the legal system would fail to provide the pre-eminence of law. The “fair trial” notion could thus be defined as a sum total of the procedural guarantees enshrined by art. 6 in the European Convention on Human Rights, an ensemble of such guarantees that allow the enjoyment of the right protected under the Convention. At the same time, bearing in mind the jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights as well, the right to a fair trial is therefore illustrated by the procedural guarantees accompanying any litigation, whatever its field of application, as the aspiration for the supremacy of law and the protection of the “rule of law” idea. As far as the consecration is concerned, the right to a fair trial is, as already shown, laid down in art. 6 of the Convention, as well as other provisions of the latter (arts. 5, 13 or 34) in Protocol 7 to the Convention, in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and in the United Nations Covenants in the field. As far as our domestic legislation is concerned, the right to a fair trial is consecrated by arts. 21, 23 and 24 in the Constitution of Romania as well as numerous procedural provisions. An analysis of the right to a fair trial should take into account the following aspects: the legal nature and the impartiality of the court, the civil or the criminal nature of the litigation, the right to free access to justice, the right to a reasonable length of the trial, the contradictoriness of the procedure, the equality of arms principle, the public nature of the procedure, the fair administration of the evidence, the presumption of innocence, the prohibition of double conviction, etc.

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