Towards Procedural Guidelines for Legal Certainty and Improved Case Management in Ukrainian Courts

Abstract

Since 2019 in courts in Odesa and Kyiv oblasts, judges developed guidelines on how to manage cases while using their legal competences as given in the various Ukrainian codes of procedure. Procedural guidelines are arrangements of judges in which they announce how they will decide for example on self-recusals and challenges of judges and various requests for delays, and on the way the courts will communicate with parties. This enables judicial case management and gives the courts control over the time they spend on different cases, proportionate to the severity/complexity of the case. In this article we describe the idea behind the guidelines, their (legal) character and their functions. We argue that procedural guidelines and the inherent judicial competence to deviate from the guidelines contribute to the courts conducting fair trials in accordance with article 6 European Convention on Human Rights.