Case Law of the European Court of Human Rights Concerning the Requirements and Restrictions of Public Trial before National Courts

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

1 Graduate of Master of Criminal Law and Criminology, Faculty of Law and Political Science, Chalus Branch, Islamic Azad University, Chalus, Iran

2 Professor, Department of Criminal Law and Criminology, Faculty of Law and Political Science, Allameh Tabatabai University, Tehran, Iran

3 PhD Student in Criminal Law and Criminology, Faculty of Law and Political Science, Allameh Tabatabai University, Tehran, Iran

10.48308/jlr.2023.227753.2244

Abstract

The acceptance of the principle of publicity of the trial as one of the fundamental examples of a fair trial in the European system of human rights has its roots in the procedure of inquisition courts in the Middle Ages. Lack of publicity of trials and violation of the rights of the accused in these courts has given rise to this inference in European thought that the secrecy of the trial and the disregard for the rights of the accused are considered to be two interrelated cases. Accordingly, a public trial is justified by this argument that public oversight will minimize the grounds of injustice in the criminal justice system. Therefore, achieving this requires conditions and mechanisms that give personality to this principle and make it consistent, because the right to a public trial is a composed concept and can be decomposed into its different components, to understand and explain the true and precise meaning of this right, the sum of those requirements must be considered. However, in certain cases, the publicity of the trial can, like any principle, have exceptions and legal limitations. Therefore, in this article, we have tried to study the European Court of Human Rights rulings and examine the case law of this institution concerning the requirements and restrictions of public trial before national courts with a descriptive-analytical approach. The results of the study show that, in general, the European Court has been able to satisfy the requirements related to the actual realization of the public trial with an authoritative action and a procedure far from hesitation and to adjust its limitations in line with the rule of the principle of publicity of the trial

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