It is not a secret that court decisions on environmental matters are not numerous among the whole spectrum of documents generated by judicial system of Ukraine. Moreover, majority of these cases are about criminal or administrative liability in this sphere, suits filed by authorities to levy costs of damage caused to the state as a result of violation of environmental legislation, administrative suits of enterprises meant to challenge decisions, actions or omissions of supervisory authorities. There are very few cases initiated by citizens or civil society organizations with the aim to protect the environment.
International charitable organization “Environment-People-Law” as an organization of practical lawyers in the field of protection of environmental rights of citizens and the environment know very well how difficult it is to look for jurisprudence in this sphere. However, these examples of positive and negative jurisprudence become a valuable source of information for development of strategies and tactics of handling other court processes in similar legal relationships.
In order to ease the work of all those who are eager to protect the environment in court, EPL is realizing the idea of creating and maintaining the Register of court decisions on environmental matters. We will upload to the register court decisions of the Supreme Court of Ukraine, higher specialized, appellate and local courts – court decisions and resolutions in civil, economic and administrative cases initiated by civil society institutes, individuals and groups of people for the benefit of environment and society. The register is located at the link http://caselawepl.org.ua and is accessible for unlimited use 24 hours a days.
What makes our register unique? First of all, it includes only those decisions that are related to environmental protection. Therefore, we collected for you all jurisprudence in this sphere in one place and there is no need for you to do complicated search in order to find the decisions you want among multimillion stock of the State register. Secondly, besides typical possibilities to search by context and requisites, we introduced the possibility of thematic search for court decisions. In the register you can filter the cases challenging legal acts, actions or omissions, agreements; cases in the sphere of nuclear energy and non-traditional gases; cases on protected areas, flora and fauna, or you can unite these filters and find a decision by several criteria. Moreover, every lawyer knows that it is not easy to find court decisions in various instances of the same case by its number because courts of various instances often use their own system of numbering decisions. When we upload cases into our register, we create links between cases of various instances so that by choosing one decision you can see all the rest decisions related to the case (decisions on the same case adopted by various instances).
International charitable organization “Environment-People-Law” plans to maintain the Register on a continuous basis by uploading there all our court decisions as well as other decisions in cases initiated by other civil society institutes or citizens for protection of the environment. Also, we would appreciate if legal and environmental activists would help us to upload new decisions to the Register. You can send a decision for inclusion to the Register to EPL’s email account (office@epl.org.ua) in the form of a link to the Unified State Register, requisites of the decision, its scanned copy or in any other form that enables us to identify the decision.
Sincerely,
EPL team
Office address: 9 Ivan Franko St. 1а, Lviv, 79005
Postal address: P. O. Box 316, Lviv, 79000
Tel: +38 (032) 24-33-888
Tel/Fax: +38 (032) 22-57-682
Email: office@epl.org.ua
