Review

As a result of the judicial reform in 2016, the Supreme Council of Justice was reorganized into the High Council of Justice, whose legal status has changed dramatically in comparison with its predecessor. The expansion of the competence of the High Council of Justice and the introduction of completely new procedures for appealing the decisions of the High Council of Justice and its structural units by the current legislation of Ukraine gave rise to a scientific discussion regarding the determination of the legal status of the High Council of Justice as a quasi-judicial body.

The purpose of this article is to investigate whether the High Council of Justice is a quasi-judicial body.

After analyzing the legal framework, the author came to the conclusion that it is necessary to analyze the practice of the European Court of Human Rights and the standards enshrined in the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms before assigning the High Council of Justice to quasi-judicial bodies. In particular, the analysis made it possible to determine the following criteria for the concept of "court", developed by international practice, namely: independence and impartiality; provision of participants with procedural safeguards; the ability of higher authorities to correct the deficiencies identified in the earlier stages of the process.

Taking into account a thorough analysis of the practice of the European Court of Human Rights, the author concluded that it was premature to define the High Council of Justice by a quasi-judicial body, since, despite the fact that the Ukrainian legislation provides for a clear process of reviewing cases by the Disciplinary Chambers and the High Council of Justice, as well as the existence of competing rights and procedural safeguards to protect their rights in the parties to the proceedings, the Ukrainian legislation did not properly ensure the delimitation of the functions of initiating disciplinary proceedings against a judge, in fact disciplinary proceedings and the decision to remove a judge, as required by the European Convention on Human Rights. In addition, the High Council of Justice is still not a sufficiently independent and impartial body with a high level of public confidence.

Key words: High Council of Justice, quasi-judicial body, court, European Court of Human Rights.