It recalls that civil servants can only be excluded from the protection embodied in Article 6 if the State in its national law expressly excluded access to a court for the category of staff in question and if this exclusion was justified on objective grounds in the State's interest (see Vilho Eskelinen and Others v. Finland, [GC], No. 63235/00, § 62, ECHR 2007-...). The Court observes that these conditions were not satisfied in the present cases. The applicants lawfully sued their employer military unit in the Ryazan Garnison Military Court which granted their claims. The case was later reconsidered on several occasions by military courts. The Court therefore agrees with the applicants that their access to a court was allowed by domestic legislation and considers in the light of the aforementioned case-law that Article 6 applied to these cases. The Government's objection must therefore be dismissed.
17. The Court notes that the applicants' complaints are not manifestly ill-founded within the meaning of Article 35 § 3 of the Convention. It further notes that they are not inadmissible on any other grounds. They must therefore be declared admissible.
B. Merits
18. The applicants argued that the quashing of the binding and enforceable judgments of 11 December 2001 delivered by the Ryazan Garnison Military Court in their favour violated the principle of legal certainty and, therefore, their right to a court and the right to peaceful enjoyment of their possessions. They emphasised that the defendant military unit did not use the available means of appeal against the judgments before they became binding and enforceable and that the subsequent supervisory review upon application of the President of the Moscow Circuit Military Court could not be justified by the higher court's mere disagreement with the decision on the merits.
19. The Government stated that the supervisory-review proceedings in the Presidium of the Moscow Circuit Military Court upon application of its President had been lawful and necessary to remedy errors in the application of material law by a lower court. They provided detailed information on the material norms that had allegedly been ignored by the Ryazan Garnison Military Court. In the Government's view, the applicants should accordingly have had no expectation of any benefit arising from the judgments in their favour. They stressed that a judicial decision could not be considered as equitable and lawful, and the judicial protection as effective, without judicial errors being corrected. The Government concluded that the quashing of the judgments in all present cases had been justified, well-founded and thus compatible with the principle of legal certainty.
20. The Court reiterates that legal certainty, which is one of the fundamental aspects of the rule of law, presupposes respect for the principle of res judicata, that is the principle of the finality of judgments. A departure from that principle is justified only when made necessary by circumstances of a substantial and compelling character, such as correction of fundamental defects or miscarriage of justice (see {Brumarescu} v. Romania [GC], No. 28342/95, § 61, ECHR 1999-VII; Ryabykh v. Russia, No. 52854/99, § 51 - 52, ECHR 2003-IX).
21. The Court recalls that it has frequently found violations of the principle of legal certainty and of the right to a court in the supervisory-review proceedings governed by the former Code of Civil Procedure as it allowed final judgments in the applicants' favour to be set aside by higher courts following applications by state officials, whose power to make such applications was not subject to any time-limit (see, among other authorities, Ryabykh, cited above, §§ 51 - 56; Volkova v. Russia, No. 48758/99, §§ 34 - 36, 5 April 2005; Roseltrans v. Russia, No. 60974/00, §§ 27 - 28, 21 July 2005). The Court further recalls
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