Archive note: This text comes from the old archive of Nomika Epilekta and is preserved with care for historical and informational reading.

We learned from the media that, for the first time (after the 117 years of operation of the supreme court), a woman was appointed president of the Areios Pagos, namely the vice-president of the Areios Pagos, Eirini (Rena) Asimakopoulou. The appointment of this Areios Pagos judge, aged 65, to the position of president of the Areios Pagos was accompanied by the familiar journalistic exaggerations, among which is included a certain statement, described as important, by the selected judge that "judges are not gods" [indicative publication in the newspaper "To Vima" of Sunday 17.07.2011, p. 47(A35), where the whole statement is included: "How are we sure that someone loses fairly? Are we judges gods?"]. With this phrase the journalist (Gianna Papadakou) supports the view that the new president of the Areios Pagos "takes a self-critical stance on issues of Justice" and accepts that erroneous judicial decisions are issued. A corresponding point was also made in the article in "Nomika Epilekta": "Was there a reaction?", which criticizes the statements of a deputy prosecutor of the Court of Appeal who, without documentation, criticized the legislative power for the (absolutely correct and necessary) possibility given for the redemption of prison sentences. It was stressed in that article that "the legislative power rightly allowed the redemption of prison sentences, so that those who for some reason broke the law (occasionally) or had the misfortune to become involved in a prosecution that ended in their conviction should not be imprisoned, a conviction that is not always the product of sound judicial judgment". And the new president of the country's supreme court accepts that many judicial decisions are erroneous, with the result that, especially on the basis of criminal court judgments, innocent persons are sent to prisons with long sentences and destroyed, or others are convicted with disproportionate penalties although they should not have been imprisoned, even because mitigating circumstances were wrongly not recognized (and also because the main rule-of-law principle is systematically violated, according to which, in case of doubt, the accused must be acquitted). However, we shall deal more extensively with this burning issue soon. Furthermore, from the newspaper publications it appears that the selection of this judge for the position of president of the Areios Pagos was due to the coincidence of her meeting with the chairman of Parliament's Institutions and Transparency Committee and current minister of justice, Miltiadis Papaiwannou, who liked (was "impressed" by) Ms Asimakopoulou and proposed her for this highest state office. In another newspaper we read that the elevation of the vice-president to president of the Areios Pagos constitutes a "milestone in the history of the supreme court" (newspaper "Proto Thema" of 17.07.2011, p. 31), whereas it is an entirely normal development, because there is not (and there is absolutely prohibited) any discrimination, including on grounds of sex, unlike the more distant and very distant past [see, in the book review, Th. Karzis, "Woman in the Middle Ages"]. This is expressly stated in the Constitution and also in Article 21§1 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union (which has been in force in the European Union since 01.12.2009 together with the Treaty of Lisbon: "1. Any discrimination based in particular on sex shall be prohibited...") and, apart from this, the courts of our country are now staffed by a majority or (many times) only by women judges, so the occupation by a woman of the position of one of the three supreme courts of the country is not a surprise. It also creates an impression that journalists regard as a qualification both the lack of particular sociability and the integrity of her character and her deep knowledge of the science and, above all, procedure, because lack of sociability is not a qualification but a serious defect, while integrity of character and deep knowledge of the science and so on are (and must be) qualifications of all judges and indeed elementary and indispensable ones [see in this regard "To Vima" of 17.07.2011, p. 47(A35)]. Finally, it is particularly striking to learn through the publications that the new president of the Areios Pagos "declared herself openly pro-lawyer" ["To Vima" of 17.07.2011], because such a declaration has no meaning unless the mentality of authoritarian and absolutist regimes also prevails in our country (and it probably does). According to that mentality, the function of the lawyer is considered at least annoying and, in any event, unnecessary. For this reason there exists in our country an antagonism between judges and lawyers that is inconceivable for a modern European state. Consequently, under this version, the president's favorable feelings toward lawyers needed to be revealed; she must abolish this antagonism together with the other dysfunctions in the way justice is administered, by giving the appropriate guidelines to her colleagues, the behavior of many of whom deviates significantly from that of other European judges [as was also observed in the article in "Nomika Epilekta" entitled "judicial power"]. In any event, the selection of a woman as president of the Areios Pagos was apt and, apart from other positives, constitutes one more of the attempts to disorient public opinion away from the insurmountable problems that are continually created because of the clumsy policies being applied and the genuinely third-world mentality that continues to prevail in our country.