The Parliament of the Republic of Lithuania is currently discussing amending the Constitution and the Law on the Constitutional Court to allow natural persons and legal entities to defend their constitutional rights before the Constitutional Court.

Anyone could plead their case

This is already possible in many democracies. It would open the way for people seek constitutional review of legal acts of Parliament, the president and the government, when said acts result in decisions that breach their rights.

The right would be available to anyone who had exhausted all other legal remedies. Furthermore, the proposed amendments would expand the right of audience to parliamentary ombudspersons as well as other parliamentary oversight bodies, such as the Children's Rights Ombudsperson and the Equal Opportunities Ombudsperson.

At present, only Parliament, its members, the courts and (in certain cases) the president or the government are allowed to petition the Constitutional Court.

To make sure that people are able effectively petition the Constitutional Court, the Human Rights Monitoring Institute proposed changes to the draft amendment that would set out how this right would be implemented.

Counsel shouldn't be mandatory

Under the draft amendment, any petition to the Constitutional Court would have to be drawn up by a lawyer, unless the person in question has a university degree in law.

"We believe that this requirement should be dropped, otherwise constitutional appeals would be a remedy only available to those with higher income. Furthermore, this requirement is absent in most of the countries that allow individual appeals to the Constitutional Court, such as Germany, Slovenia, Slovakia, Latvia, Croatia, Georgia," said Erika Leonaitė, the legal coordinator for the Human Rights Monitoring Institute.

The Human Rights Monitoring Institute also asked lawmakers to give the Constitutional Court the ability to extend missed appeal deadlines if they were missed for an important reason.

Furthermore, to ensure that decisions violating a person’s rights are not implemented, it was suggested to allow suspending decisions until the Constitutional Court finishes examining the case.