Court should be fair: Council of Churches and Association of Judges have a Round Table

On April 20 there was held a round table “Justice in Society. What court decisions will be fair?”, initiated by the All-Ukrainian Association of Administrative Judges together with the All-Ukrainian Council of Churches, writes the site of the District Administrative Court in Kiev city.

The participants of the event noted judges have to be fair when fulfilling their duties while respondents in judicial proceedings have to accept a court decision as fair.

The attendees underscored a judge should take a decision based on his/her knowledge, his main task being to establish truth and peace and not to put pressure by any means.

According to the President of All-Ukrainian Association of Administrative Judges Alexander Paseniuk, there can by only one priority when it comes to the notion of “justice” – this is the law.

The Ukrainian Orthodox Church was represented by Chairman of the Synod’s Law Department Archpriest Alexander Bakhov. In his welcome speech he congratulated the present on Easter and sent the blessing of the UOC Primate His Beatitude Metropolitan of Kiev and All Ukraine Onuphry.

“Such an event has taken place for the first time,” emphasized its significance the Archpriest. “It’s very good for judges to take interest in such categories as justice and truth when they carry out a judicial proceeding.”

“Undoubtedly, each court decision should be fair. It’s a pity that de facto we can have a legitimate but not fair decision. An issue of justice is also raised in the context of judicial reform. Therefore, when introducing in practice the principle of justice in court proceedings at a legislative level it’s important to approach it in a complex way.

A category of justice is subjective, and each party believes a court decision to be fair as long as it is satisfied with it. That’s why a legislator has to introduce certain criteria to define how fair a court decision is.

The legitimacy of the court decision can be verified with the use of substantive and procedural law, but what is a standard or benchmark to make sure a court decision is fair? Every party to the proceeding has their own vision of justice,” stressed the UOC Law Department Chairman.

During the round table representatives of the Association of Jewish organizations in Ukraine, Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church, Kiev Patriarchate, as well as Spiritual Administration of Muslims in Ukraine also voiced their position on the matter in question.

Earlier the Heads of Churches underscored that judges should adopt professional and impartial decisions. In March 2016 All-Ukrainian Council of Churches and Religious Organizations made an official statement regarding a social and political situation in Ukraine which highlighted an idea that, “Our strength lies in unity and persistent work of everybody at their place. Continual infighting, disputes and futile hopes that somebody will come and do our job for us are just going to weaken Ukraine.”

The Round Table participants saw it eye to eye that should be made a series of similar events that will become a prospective debating forum for judges, as well as activists and journalists.

Reportedly, the initiative of having a round table “Justice in Society. What court decisions will be fair?” at which judges could have a possibility to raise issues of the correlation of such notions as “justice”, “truth” and “law” was born over a year ago at the District Administrative Court in Kiev city.