Constitutional and legal approaches to determining the place of prosecutor’s office in the system of public authorities

Abstract

The prosecutor’s office in ukraine has undergone its own path of transformational change. As of today, the constitutional and legal status of the prosecutor’s office and prosecutors is regulated, along with the Basic Law of Ukraine and the relevant profile law and international treaties ratified by Ukraine. The constitutional and legal status of the Prosecutor’s Office has changed somewhat since the adoption of the Law of Ukraine “On the Prosecutor’s Office” in 2014, as well as after amendments to the Constitution of Ukraine on justice in 2016. As a result, both prosecutors began to play an auxiliary role outside the criminal justice system, while public authorities and local governments were given the right to go to court on their own. The modernization of the constitutional and legal status of the Prosecutor’s Office is taking place in connection with the existence of a number of obligations of the Ukrainian state to the Council of Europe. It is determined that the modern legal doctrine is characterized by the fact that there is a rethinking of the mechanism of checks and balances and the allocation of another branch of government - control. It is established that the prosecutor’s office supervises the observance of laws (one of the functions of the prosecutor’s office), the current legislation of Ukraine does not provide for the implementation of such functions on behalf of parliament. However, the most common views are that the prosecutor’s office should be considered as an integral part of the law enforcement system in terms of ensuring the functioning of state bodies. Under such conditions, the prosecutor’s office is positioned as having nothing to do with the executive branch. Another approach suggests that the prosecutor’s office is part of a system of executive bodies with possibly potential judicial affiliation. In Ukraine, the place of prosecutor’s offices in the system of public authorities has not yet been determined; in the state mechanism, the prosecutor’s office has not received its clearly defined constitutional and legal status, as it is currently not assigned to any branch of government; the legal status of the prosecutor’s office in Ukraine needs to be further reformed in terms of compliance with international human rights standards.

Keywords

• prosecutor’s office
• state power
• mechanism of checks and balances