Constitutional Court Rejects Government's Bid to Remove Judge from Pavel's Lawsuit

The plenary session of the Czech Constitutional Court has rejected the government's request to remove rapporteur judge Pavel Šamal from the case concerning President Petr Pavel's jurisdictional dispute lawsuit. This was stated in the court's ruling, published on Thursday.

Šamal had been handling the case as rapporteur judge, and it was on his recommendation that the court issued an interim measure obliging the government to ensure the president's participation in the Ankara summit. The government insisted that the judge had committed a procedural violation by forwarding the president's lawsuit to the cabinet for a response too late.

The Government's Complaints

President Pavel filed the jurisdictional lawsuit on June 22. According to the government, Šamal did not send the document to the cabinet for a response until June 25 — even though he had already requested supporting materials from the prime minister on June 23, and the court had issued its interim ruling on June 24.

The government's submission stated: "Judge Pavel Šamal violated his duty to immediately forward the lawsuit to the other parties in the proceedings along with a request for their explanations, as well as the government's right to comment on the merits of the lawsuit, thereby violating its right to a fair trial." The cabinet acknowledged that the judge's actions may have been an unintentional oversight, but argued that the serious consequences of this error warranted his removal from the case.

The Court Sides with the Judge

The Constitutional Court's plenary session disagreed with these arguments. In the court's view, the government was effectively seeking the judge's recusal based solely on the timing of his notification — that is, purely on procedural grounds. "In no judicial proceeding in the Czech Republic can a judge be deemed biased solely on the basis of his procedural actions," the court's published opinion states.

The court emphasized that an objection of bias is not intended to allow parties to a case to have the legality of a judge's actions reviewed simply because they accuse him of partiality. When examining such an objection, the court does not assess the lawfulness of the procedure itself, but solely whether the judge can be considered impartial. The plenum ultimately concluded that Šamal is not a biased figure, and the case will remain under his jurisdiction.

Around Prague, based on reporting by novinky.cz