Access to Justice in Eastern Europe (Aug 2021)
JUDICIAL LAW-MAKING AND ITS REGULATION IN INDEPENDENT UKRAINE: ITS HISTORY AND DEVELOPMENT
Abstract
The article studies the history of the origin and development of legal regulation of judicial law-making in Ukraine. The analysis of doctrinal ideas about judicial lawmaking, as well as the peculiarities of its formation in Ukraine, allowed us to emphasise that our scientific research is relevant because of: 1) the duration of the domestic judicial system and judicial reform, which dates back to the proclamation of Ukraine’s independence (1991) and continues to this day; 2) the ambiguity of the legal support for judicial law-making in Ukraine, the high level of its variability, and the uncertainty of the legal status of the subjects of judicial power in the mechanism of domestic law-making; 3) the doctrinal uncertainty of the place of judicial law-making in the domestic legal system, the ambiguity of its scientific perception, and the understanding of its function in the domestic mechanism of legal regulation. This paper analyses the provisions of the legislation of Ukraine in terms of legal support for forms and procedures of judicial law-making, the legal significance of judicial law-making acts, and their impact on administering justice in Ukraine. Particular attention is paid to the activities of the judiciary in the areas of law enforcement and law-making, the relationship and interaction of which requires strengthening in the current context of reforming the judicial system and the judiciary in Ukraine. The stages of development of the legal regulation of judicial law-making in Ukraine are revealed, the peculiarities of the legal support for judicial law-making are determined, and the content of the legal regulation of the mechanism of participation of the subjects of the judicial power of Ukraine in the national law-making is characterised. Analysis of the history of the legal regulation of judicial law-making in Ukraine and the current state of its legal provision allowed us to conclude that despite the scale of legislative changes in the legal support for the judicial system of Ukraine today, neither the Supreme Court, nor the Constitutional Court of Ukraine, nor any other court institution is recognised by the legislation of Ukraine as subjects of law-making. The legislation of Ukraine does not contain a clear definition of their status as the subject of law-making with the right to accept generally obligatory acts of this process. It is noted that such uncertainty significantly weakens both the legal support for the courts and their activities. At the same time, it is noted that as a result of the adoption of legislative acts within the judicial reform during 2014-2017, which are still in force today, the legislator has made a significant step towards recognising and consolidating the official status of judicial law-making, namely: 1) a number of legislative powers of the Supreme Court and the Constitutional Court of Ukraine were consolidated; 2) the legislative regulation of the stages of the law-making process by the Supreme Court and the Constitutional Court of Ukraine has been strengthened; 3) the legal consolidation of the status of law-making acts of the Supreme Court and the Constitutional Court of Ukraine has been improved.
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