Review

The causes and conditions of the institutional formation of advocacy of Ukraine are researched in the article. The doubt is cast on the view that it originates from Kyiv Rus, in particular from the witnesses and eyewitnesses of Rus’ka Pravda. The idea is expressed that the witnesses were transformed into compurgators during the Lithuanian and Russian period, but eyewitnesses – into the witnesses in their modern meaning.

On the grounds of literature based on original sources and legislation of that time, it is proved that the roots of advocacy of Ukraine are traced to the Ukrainian territory of Volyn’, Kyiv region, and the eastern part of Podillia, which were the parts of Grand Duchy of Lithuania in the end of XV – the beginning of XVI centuries. The social, economic, political and legal grounds of advocacy formation and establishment, its general rules and peculiarities inherent to Ukraine of that time are characterized. It is showed that advocacy of Ukraine was institutionally (legislatively) fixed in the First Statute of Lithuania (1529), but its formation as a group of legally aware people who provided judicial representation in civil cases and defense in criminal cases, that is the legal profession, started when the Statute of Lithuania (1566) was in force, and finished after it was fixed in the Statute of Lithuania (1588).

The conclusion is that the bar of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, and therefore advocacy Ukraine is historically not the first legal profession Eastern Europe. On this occasion, occasionally noted that the advocacy of Russia was formed only in 1864, and formed not through evolution, but reformist.

Keywords: Kyiv Rus, judicial representation, Russian-Lithuanian Commonwealth, formation of advocacy of Ukraine, constitutional establishment of advocacy of Ukraine.