Electronic Court as a Legal and Administrative Category

The purpose of the article is to define the content and determine the essence of e-court as a legal and administrative category based on the analysis of the current domestic legislation, international normative legal acts and lawyers’ opinions. Methods. The validity of theoretical provisions and recommendations for further research, as well as the reliability of the results are ensured by the use of a set of philosophical, general and special research methods. The dialectical method of scientific cognition is used as the main general research method. Formal legal and systemic structural methods are applied for studying normative legal acts regulating e-court functioning. Logical semantic method is used when formulating definition constructions. Results. It is noted that for the successful implementation of Electronic court project it is important not only to adopt relevant regulations and organizational measures, but also to develop a scientific concept within the science of administrative law. The content of the category has not got a legal definition in domestic law yet, although it has been legally formalized. The authors express the opinion that domestic legislation requires the concept formulation and consolidation at the legislative level – within the Law of Ukraine on the Judiciary and the Status of Judges. The importance of developing and adopting a separate law on distance e-justice is emphasized. It is highlighted that further introduction of e-court in Ukraine involves systematic actions. They are technical and information support of courts; development of measures and systems to ensure information security; legal regulation of responsibility in case of violations; measures to prevent cybercrime; court staff trainings; educational campaign among population, monitoring of the system effectiveness and its constant modernization, etc. All the above allows considering e-court as an administrative and legal category. Conclusions. As a result of the analysis, the authors suggest forming the awareness that e-court, as a legal and administrative category, is a component of e-government, a relatively independent and unique form of judicial administration and legal process based on information technology that provides a full cycle of documentation flow and litigation in an electronic format and has genuinely legal nature.