Judicial Reform of 1864 on the Territory of the Ukrainian Provinces of the Russian Empire and Its Importance for the Development of Civil Proceedings in Ukraine

Abstract

The article considers the judicial reform of 1864 and its importance for the development of civil procedural legislation in Ukraine. The author supports the idea that there is a need to improve the mechanism of judicial protection of violated rights and legitimate interests in civil proceedings through judicial reforms and that this can be done by considering the lessons from history. The results of the implementation of the judicial reform of the late nineteenth century on the territory of the Russian Empire offer the best solutions to the problems that are experienced in modern civil proceedings. The way that the legal statutes were implemented, in particular the Statute of Civil Procedure in the Ukrainian provinces which were part of the Russian Empire, will provide an opportunity to analyze the legal aspects and sociocultural phenomena that influenced it. This in turn will enable conclusions to be drawn about the prospects for the harmonization of the national civil procedural law and international standards of justice. In modern conditions these approaches have a great impact on the fundamental underlying ideas of civil justice – optionality and adversarial nature of process, openness and transparency of the proceedings, the court’s independence and impartiality, commitment and enforceability of judgments.