You're reading: In search for court reform, dilemma over verifying judges

Who will judge Ukraine’s 9,000 judges?


That’s the problem facing reformers who want to cleanse perhaps the
weakest link in the nation’s law enforcement system.

While nearly everyone from the nation’s leaders to the average citizen
acknowledge that corruption exists on all levels of the legal system, there’s
no consensus among experts on how the crooked system can effectively verify
their fitness for service.

On Feb. 2, Ukraine’s parliament passed in the first of two readings
constitutional amendments to the judiciary that partially address the problem.
If adopted, the measures could have judges re-apply for their jobs and undergo
requalification.

On the same day of parliament’s vote, Ukrainian media noticed that
Pechersk District Court Justice Serhiy Vovk was back in his robe after a series
of suspensions for deliberately making unjust rulings. The reinstated judge had
sentenced former Interior Minister Yury Lutsenko to four years in prison in a
case that was widely seen as politically motivated during the presidency of
Viktor Yanukovych. According to media reports, Vovk’s suspension had expired,
so he was simply reinstated.

“Judges are afraid of requalification,” Volodymyr Pavlenko, the head of
KPMG’s Kyiv litigation practice, told the Kyiv Post in an interview. “Now, a
lot of conversations are being had in principle regarding the law, saying that
each judge should be reconsidered as if they were new.”

One solution is to fire all the judges to start with a totally fresh
slate, according to many of the Georgian reformers and Prime Minister Arseniy
Yatsenyuk.

This would be a bad idea, Pavlenko said, not least because it could
violate a principle in international law that judges cannot be fired without
cause. Instead, lawmakers from President Petro
Poroshenko’s bloc decided to move towards recertifying the entire judiciary.

“According to this, judges will have to pass a test,” Pavlenko said.
“The verification will start with the Supreme Court and the Highest Specialized Courts, then at the level of the appeals courts and down. The
process will take a few years – (but) in two to three years everything will be
done.”

Integrity

But who will verify the judges?

“Now, there’s a big danger that the new organ
will be difficult to create in any quality way,” said Roman Kuibida, who is the
deputy head of the Center of Policy and Legal Reform. “But, the qualifying
commission will at least be constructed with the purpose of fighting these
problems.”

The judges will be measured according to their competency, integrity,
and observance of ethical rules. The certification criteria are vague partially
because any details that would give the process teeth have been bogged down in
interminable fights in parliament.

There’s a mixture of worry and grim resignation to the idea that the
requalification system will be used as another means to stack the courts in
favor of a given political interest.

“Many judges say they aren’t planning vacations for this summer, because
they think the qualification system will be used to forcibly remove them, and
then put someone in from a different group,” Pavlenko said. “It’s a question of
political pressure. And how this mechanism will be used for the reformation of
the court system.”

Kyiv Post Staff Writer Josh Kovensky can be reached at
[email protected].

This story has been updated to reflect that the Highest Specialized Courts, and not the Upper Constitutional Courts, will be at the beginning of the verification process.