Review

Access to justice is a fundamental principle of criminal proceedings and one of the most important guarantees of criminal proceedings participants’ rights. Nevertheless, nowadays there is no single approach to concept and content of this legal category. The reason is a large number of related and similar terms which apply to domestic legislation of Ukraine and international legal acts, as well as lack of established scientific grounds regarding legal nature of access to justice, its purpose and essence.

Thus, the purpose of the article is: 1) to analyze current legislation, international standards and scientific background in the domain of access to justice; 2) to define concept and content of access to justice in criminal proceedings of Ukraine.

It needs to be mentioned that in comparison with civil, commercial and administrative proceedings, criminal procedural law regulates social relations which involve the most substantial interference with human rights. The high level of interference and limitations surely generates requirements for establishing in criminal proceedings certain guarantees (including access to justice), which have to be effective and efficient. However, this cannot be achieved without thorough and solid legal terminology which should exclude ambiguous interpretation of any legal categories and provide a basis for their proper understanding. Therefore, criminal proceedings require additional attention even to small details: subtleties of juridical technique, language constructs and so forth. In this regard, as it has already been mentioned, concept and content of access to justice in criminal proceedings of Ukraine remains problematic.

It is concluded that the concept of access to justice (in criminal proceedings and in general) is insufficiently explored and current legislation contains a number of similar definitions with uncertain difference remaining between them. The same applies to the content of access to justice which has ambiguous interpretations in legal literature. It is suggested to streamline legal terminology in regard to access to justice.

Key words: access to justice, accessibility of justice, access to court, right to a court, right to a fair trial, right to judicial protection, criminal proceedings.