Legal Basis of Protection of Nature and the Role of Courts while Protecting Nature in Lithuania

Abstract

It is commonly understood that nature has the biggest value for humanity. The article examines and analyzes the legal framework for nature conservation and issues related to state institutions including the judiciary’s role in protecting and preserving the environment and its individual objects. Also article analysis how courts contribute to the highest human values - the protection and enhancement of nature while administering justice. On nature and its resources depends what kind of economy we will have and develop in the future on state and global scale. While speaking about the economic issues O. Blanchard states that it is also important for everyone to know not only what to expect today, but what to expect in the future too. Since the nature and its objects are especially important human value for their protection the state institutions, inspections and judicial authority are mobilized as The Constitution of the Republic of Lithuania states that judicial authority works to protect the human rights. It means that the judicial power as well as other two powers is also responsible for nature protection as it is a right of all humans. The work also analyzes the statistics of nature protection and the executive’s contribution to the protection of nature. The topic is relevant because it examines the issue concerning not only a particular area of our social life, but also each one of us. In international and national acts of nature protection and in final decisions of courts reinforces the legal imperative of providing a regulatory framework for the protection of nature and also establishes the right for all subjects to use natural goods. This inevitably affects not only each one of us but also the whole society and the state. Although the topic of environmental protection is not basically new, there is no detailed examination about current legal framework and judicial significance for the protection of nature in Lithuanian researches. That is why this issue is not fully investigated and it can manifest only by the individual phrases without a specific study conclusions.