International Standards for the Formation of the Judiciary as a Basis for Improving the Guarantees of Independence of the Court and Judges in Ukraine

The article covers the international standards and reveals their features in the context of the formation of the judiciary as a basis for improving the guarantees of independence of the court and judges. It is established that the reorganization of the judiciary will affect the relationship between the Supreme Council of Justice and the Supreme Qualification Commission of Judges of Ukraine. Ensuring the independence of the judiciary is currently one of the main priorities of this reorganization. It is determined that the main principles of independence of the judiciary and judges are legality, freedom of personal beliefs, in particular, a high level of legal awareness. It is established that one of the guarantees of the independence of the court and judges is the procedure of selecting candidates for the position of a judge. It was found out that a judge could not be subject to disciplinary action for a court decision that he had made, except in cases of a crime or disciplinary misconduct. It is proved that the main grounds for bringing a judge to disciplinary responsibility are: 1) cases of frequent reversal of court decisions made by a particular judge, based on the grounds of their illegality and/or unfoundedness; 2) non-compliance by a judge with the requirements of procedural decisions, which provide the basic principles of the tasks of court proceedings, or failure to take into account some evidence that is present in the case file during the trial and the relevant court decision. It is established that the international standards of formation of the corps of judges are divided into 1) standards that determine the procedure for selection of staff for the position of a judge; 2) standards that contain requirements for personnel applying for the position of a judge; 3) standards that define the features of the training of judges; 4) standards that define guarantees in the course of judges’ performance of their duties. It is proposed to identify areas of legal and organizational improvement of forming the judiciary in Ukraine as the prospects for further research in this direction.