Supreme Court could become court of cassation

One of the priorities of the Ministry of Justice for this year is to reform the Supreme Court of Justice by transforming it into a court of cassation, whose scope would be limited to questions of law, as opposed to questions of fact, and which would be responsible for the uniformity of the case-law. The announcement was made by Justice Minister Alexandru Tanase at the international conference titled “Moldova's Justice and European Integration”, Info-Prim Neo reports. “Today the Supreme Court of Justice hears questions of fact as well, which we think is unacceptable. Instead, the Supreme Court should concern itself with matters of application of the law”, said the minister. Alexandru Tanase stated that at present the Supreme Court has an enormous caseload and cannot cope with the functions it was initially conceived to exercise. The judicial reform would also include the development of amendments to primary and secondary legislation and the promotion of new legislation. One of such new bills which has already been tabled with the Government concerns the dissolution of specialized courts. The minister also said that in a small country like Moldova the territorial range of the district courts should not coincide with the administrative boundaries of the districts, as this affects the independence of the judicial system. Speaking about wages, Minister Tanase promised that the salary of court clerks would be doubled in September 2011, and judges would also see a substantial raise from 1 January 2012.