The Determination of the «Reasonable Time» of the Civil Judicial Procedure in the European Court of Human Rights Jurisprudence (English version)

In the European Court of Human Rights, the determination of «the right to an examination of the case in a reasonable period of time» consists in the affirmation of the idea of justice. In fact, one of the dimensions of justice is its efficacy and, thus, an utterly correct decision given out of time (in both ways, too long or too short) will never satisfy the necessity of both parts seeing their rights defined. The idea of reasonable term is an idea that has been being defined and that assumes different dimensions concerning the character of a process. In civil matters, the period starts with the initiation of the proceedings in court and such idea must be faced in general terms, concerning mainly some preliminary administrative phases that are imposed by the State legislation as mandatory in view of the subsequently presentation of the cause. The most important criteria to evaluate the reasonability of the period are: a) the process complexity, b) the behavior of national authorities, c) the behavior of the applicant himself, d) what the applicant demands. Important to mention is that only the delays that were due to the responsible authorities can be imputed to the States and that is why they are the only responsible for checking if article 6, paragraph 1, was or was not violated, breached. Also, concerning the judicial organization, States are sovereign and the European Court of Human Rights does not impose any specific model on them, as long as their politics, legislations and functional board obey by the «principle of decisions in a reasonable term».