Review

Judicial reform boosted by the enactment of laws of Ukraine dd. June 02, 2016 “On Amendments to the Constitution of Ukraine (concerning the system of justice)” and “On the Judiciary and the Status of Judges” has upgraded approaches to the domestic judicial organization, the status of judges and many judicial institutions in general. The attention of authorities and society has been attracted not so much to the results of judicial activities, but to the parties that carry it out. Each judiciary representative has become responsible for regaining public trust to the judicial court institution.

As one of tools required to demonstrate high qualification and competence of judicial community and to “cleanup” the judicial system of those not complying with such standards, an institute of qualification assessment has been introduced. It has been put in charge of the High Judicial Qualification Commission (HJQCU).

The qualification assessment procedures have been launched on October 20, 2017 and are still ongoing. Based on the official data, as of December 26, 2018, 1624 judges have successfully passed the assessment and confirmed their compliance with their position, 419 judges of local and appeal courts failed to convince the HJQCU in complying with their positions. Out of these, 240 judges have accepted the resignation. Separate judges consider the applied procedure unjustified and pursue litigation against the HJQCU.

So, certain perception about this institution in action has already been developed, which allows for assessing existing achievements and miscalculations. And we shall acknowledge here that overwhelming majority of both the judges and the expert community disapproves of not so much the idea of qualification assessment of judges, as namely the implementation mechanism. It is confirmed by the sociological surveys’ data, which show that the qualification assessment of judges is considered to be dependent on the authorities, biased, non-transparent and corrupt.

Purpose of this article is to investigate the regulatory basis of the qualification assessment in Ukraine and to clarify the causes of its negative perception by the society.

Understanding the source of the distrust in the judges’ qualification assessment procedure would allow drafting proposals, which would support the efficiency of this institute and eliminate the reasons for perceiving it as an instrument of pressure on judges.

Key words: court, judge, status of a judge, qualification assessment, judicial independence, judicial reform.