An Examination of the Administrative Courts of Ukraine in the Context of Understanding the Concept of “a Court Established by Law”’

Abstract

Background: Constituent parts of the right to a fair trial, which presuppose the need for the existence of institutions in a state that are authorised to review and resolve legal conflicts and united by the concept of ‘a court established by law’, are identified and studied in this article. The study is based on the decisions of the European Court of Human Rights, which outlines the criteria to which any institution authorised to administer justice must correspond. The aim of the study is to verify the Ukrainian laws that determine the principles of developing and functioning administrative courts in order to enshrine in their texts the requirements arising from the content of a legal formula for a ‘court established by law’. Methods: In this article, the authors use the following special legal methods: conceptual-legal, comparative-legal, formal-legal, and others. For example, with the help of the formal-legal method, it was possible to analyse the current trends in the practice of national administrative courts in compliance with the proposed requirements. Results and Conclusions: The article states that the operation of Ukrainian laws creates the right conditions for administrative courts to be perceived as institutions with ‘full jurisdiction’ in resolving public disputes of any kind. At the same time, the authors conclude that there are cases in which the courts violate the provisions of Art. 6 § 1 of the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms of 1950, despite the fact that such provisions have been implemented in the national administrative, procedural law.

Keywords

• a right to a fair trial; guarantees of a fair trial; a court established by law; the case law of the european court of human rights; an administrative court