The HCA supports automation

The Higher Court of Arbitration (HCA) produced a document aimed at ensuring independence of the arbitrators by way of automated allocation of cases to them. Experts say that elaboration of that resolution by the HCA may be connected to the fears that the achievements of the courts of arbitration in this sphere will not be taken into account by the unified Supreme Court (SC). Lawyers admit that there is a possibility that the reform would result in equalizing the courts of arbitration with the general jurisdiction courts, where the chairpersons allocate cases to judges.

Alexander Bolomatov, Partner of the Law Firm "YUST", points out that automatic allocation of cases has been forming for the last 15 years, and is regulated by internal instructions. He reasons: “The fact that the HCA judges have raised the question shows that they see this procedure of assigning judges as an important achievement of the arbitration system in ensuring independence of judges”. Chairpersons of the general jurisdiction courts still assign cases to judges. Mr. Bolomatov surmises that the HCA judges don’t know how the new SC will apply their internal instructions, and want to secure their procedure by a Plenum resolution - which will survive the elimination of the HCA.