Ukraine chief justice criticizes working conditions, proposed reforms

Valentyna Danishevska, the chief justice of the
Supreme Court of Ukraine, criticized the conditions under which the nation’s
judges are currently working, as well as radical reforms proposed by top
officials in an interview published on July 18 by the Interfax-Ukraine news
agency. Many judges have recently resigned their positions because of what she
characterized as an excessively stressful workload and “an uncomfortable
environment,” leaving judges to feel they are not protected by the state amid
pressure. Ninety-eight judges have resigned in just the last three months, she
said. As a result, Ukraine’s judiciary only has 63% of its necessary number of
judges working, with the shortage in the appellate courts particularly acute at
five or seven times fewer than needed. Ten district courts aren’t functioning
at all owing to a lack of judges with the appropriate authority.

Meanwhile, the radical reforms that are being proposed
by top officials – particularly Mikheil Saakashvili, the head of the National
Reforms Council – are nothing concrete yet, she said. The success of the
proposal to include foreign-citizen judges in the Supreme Court would depend
upon them being protected by their native states, she said. Yet the
Constitution requires them to be Ukrainian citizens and speak Ukrainian. “And
actually, I don’t know any examples in the world in which this practice led to
some kind of breakthrough,” she said.

Danishevska’s interview was published the day after
the National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) announced it had conducted an
extensive investigation of the District Administrative Court of Kyiv. It
resulted in the naming of Ñhief Judge Pavlo Vovk – and six judges of his court
– as suspects in the criminal charges of creating a criminal organization and
attempting to seize power, as reported by the Western-financed Anti-Corruption
Centre. Others involved will be handed notices of suspicion as well. The
seizure of power involved plans to take control of the High Qualifications
Commission of Judge and the High Council of Justice by creating artificial
impediments in their work, NABU alleged.

Zenon Zawada: The
situation with Ukraine’s judges is a double-edged sword. Though the Zelensky
administration hasn’t been able to improve their working conditions – having
been in power for only a year (and likely lacking the skill to do so) – to make
them immune to political pressure, many question whether better wages and job
security would even improve their functioning. Much of the public is
unsympathetic to their otherwise difficult plight, owing to the widespread
corruption they are associated with (as exemplified by this latest Pavlo Vovk
case).

At the same time judges are calling for protection
(and job security) from the president that they claim they need to improve
their work, they are also being targeted with anti-corruption investigations
that threaten the very security they are asking for. Though clean judges should
not be concerned about such investigations, these are far and few between because
they have alleged that the very system itself forces many to reach corrupt
rulings, despite whatever positive intentions they had entering into it. The
situation is a “closed circle,” as the Ukrainians say.

To break this circle and for judges to resist
corruption successfully, the government would need to create a system of
intense review of rulings that handsomely rewards, protects and promotes those
judges whose decisions are determined to consistently uphold the standard of
rule of law. Yet the reality is that such reviews could only be conducted by
those judges with experience working in the West (or other rule of law
societies), or Western judges themselves.

For anything to conceivably change in the next
five-ten years, we see radical measures like the involvement of Western judges
to be necessary. We would argue that Western-citizen judges would not only be
helpful at the Supreme Court level, but at all levels of the Ukrainian
judiciary. Otherwise, the same corrupt norms and practices, persistent in the
last three decades, will merely be passed from one generation of judges to the
next. Even if Pavlo Vovk is prosecuted for his alleged crimes (already
doubtful), another is in the making.

What Western-citizen judges would offer is an
ability to try cases with immunity from political or business pressure, as well
a genuine professional interest in issuing just rulings, rather than using them
to finance their political parties, real estate investments, vacations and/or
retirement.