The principle of immediacy and Law on Changes and Supplements of the Law on Legal Proceedings (2009)

In this work the author analyzes the changes regarding concretizing the principle of immediacy brought by the Law on Changes and Supplements of the Law on Legal Proceedings in December 2009. The author confirms that the legislator has significantly broadened the range of this principle by widening the principle of self-governing trial related to friendly trial, new rules on functional authority, fictions about the agreement of the parties about the functional authority during the lawsuit, rules on immediate time validness of the changed law, new rules about indirect presenting of evidence when the main dispute starts from scratch, rules about the active role of the court during the proceedings, rules about the obligatory oral dispute in the appellate court. The author considers that the new legal rules regarding the new functional authority of the judge assistants harm not only the principle of immediacy, but also the constitution and principle of division of authorities. New legal rules enable the judge assistants, who are state clerks and belong to executive authorities, although they have not been elected as judges, to personally take the court legal actions in certain phases of the procedure (in the preparatory procedure and procedure on legal remedies) and manage the procedure.