Dear visitors,

In the year of 2009 we marked ten years since Lithuania joined progressive and modern states where one is able to protect his (her) rights against the powerful state mechanism before specialised administrative courts.

We can bravely say that during this decade administrative courts have not only established themselves, but also became a vitally important chain of courts, while the fact of their establishment, as well as the functions they perform were positively evaluated by international experts.

In 2009, while implementing its mission to protect the rights of individuals against unauthorised actions of public bodies (officials), the Supreme Administrative Court of Lithuania consistently strived to ensure that the system of administrative courts served the idea of the protection of basic human rights and freedoms. The constantly increasing stream flow of cases received by the Court shows that more and more individuals trust the Court and see it as a place to reach justice.

However, the recent years have also been challenge for the Supreme Administrative Court of Lithuania because of rapidly growing amounts of received cases and its increasing workload. The following figures demonstrate the complicated situation: while a total of 4 004 cases were filed before the Court in 2005, 5 579 cases in 2006, 5 946 cases in 2007, 8 177 cases in 2008, and as much as 8 448 cases in 2009. Consequently, during the last five years the workload of the Supreme Administrative Court of Lithuania more than doubled (from 4 004 to 8 448 cases).
Due to the growing number of cases heard, the workload of an average judge in 2009 also grew by 33 percent. Presently, there are fifteen judges at the Supreme Administrative Court of Lithuania - the latter number has been the same since 2005. Therefore, only by joint mobilized effort of all of the Court's staff, in 2009, for the first time during the last five years, the Supreme Administrative Court of Lithuania heard and resolved more cases than it received during that year, i.e. in 2009, a total of 8 723 cases was decided, compared to 8 448 cases received.

It is also to be noted that the administrative courts themselves control the legitimacy of normative acts adopted by bodies of public administration. In this regard the competence of administrative courts resembles that exercised by the Constitutional Court. In 2009 alone, the Supreme Administrative Court of Lithuania, acting as the so-called "minor constitutional court", investigated twenty complicated cases concerning the legitimacy of normative administrative legal acts. In four of such instances the latter acts were declared to be in conflict with the laws and, therefore, are considered as invalid.