President Michel Aoun delivered a speech on the occasion of the Court of Cassation centennial, saying that “it is remarkable that the foundations and pillars of the State in Lebanon were laid before the proclamation of the State itself.”
“The Lebanese Court of Cassation is one of these pillars, and it was founded one year or more before the Proclamation of the "State of Greater Lebanon", in an unequivocal message that justice is the foundation of ruling and the basis of the State,” he added.
Aoun stressed that the “Justice of the Earth requires that some essentials must be available in every court and every trial.”
“Every plaintiff must find his judge and must have for his claim and grievance a final resort which will lead him to justice, every litigant plaintiff must have a fair trial and every litigant plaintiff must have guarantees which are already at the core of our Constitution, precisely in Article 20 thereof, and remained intact from any amendment since the drafting of the Constitution,” Aoun said.
“These guarantees must be parallel and equal to those of the judges, notably the presumption of innocence, the right to defense, to 'in presentia' trial and to appeal verdicts and contest them when the conditions for revocation apply, and not exhaust the litigants with high costs that repel them out of incapacity and not out of conviction,” he continued.
“Every litigant plaintiff must have a quick but not hasty trial because every late justice is the antonym of justice; it is rather a denial of the right.”
The president also noted that the Judges must also shield themselves with physical and moral guarantees, the most important of which remains independence, the independence of the constitutional power and the independence of the individual judge.