“The Journal of the University of Latvia. Law” has published an article by Dr Dovilė Pūraitė-Andrikienė, a researcher at the Law Institute of the Lithuanian Centre for Social Sciences, titled “Impeachment Proceedings in Lithuania: Model, Problems of Implementation, and Possibilities of Improvement”.

The case law of the Constitutional Court of the Republic of Lithuania (hereinafter – the Constitutional Court, the Court) concerning impeachment cases is exceptionally extensive. Nevertheless, according to the researcher, the problems related to the implementation of the Court’s recent conclusions in impeachment cases raise questions about the optimality of the legal regulation of the impeachment proceedings.

A significant part of the problems associated with the implementation of the Constitutional Court’s conclusions in impeachment cases arises from the fact that two institutions are involved in the impeachment proceedings in Lithuania: the Constitutional Court decides whether a person’s actions contradict (or do not contradict) the Constitution and whether these actions have violated the Constitution grossly, and the Seimas takes the final decision on whether to remove a person from office for actions that contradict the Constitution. In her article, the author discusses the need, preconditions, and possibilities for improving the legal regulation of the impeachment proceedings in Lithuania. Legislative amendments should be considered that might not completely solve the problems discussed, but would at least partially mitigate them.

The open-access article is available in English here.