Judicial law-making: a significant achievement or a side effect of the judicial reform
Authors: Kryvytskyi, Yuriy Vitaliyovych 
Published: January 2025

The article substantiates and proves that judicial law-making is a significant achievement of the judicial reform,
and not the other way around — it is only a side effect of the transformation of the justice system. The legal nature
of judicial law-making is characterized, taking into account modern contextual and conceptual approaches to
understanding the law-making potential of the court. Judicial law-making is an important, integral and special
type of law-making. Historical experience testifies not only to the fact of the existence of judicial law-making in
various legal systems of the world, but also to the fact that it is impossible without an independent judiciary, which
is called to administer justice in accordance with the principle of the rule of law. The legal nature of judicial lawmaking is deep and multifaceted, in particular, it is a way of achieving the goal of justice; an important guarantee of
the protection of human rights; a necessary element of implementing the rule of law in the mechanism of ensuring
human rights and freedoms; a means of overcoming legislative gaps and exceptional legal problems in the course
of law enforcement; instrument of law extension, etc. In the democratic countries of the world, judicial law-making
has proven itself as an effective tool entrusted to the courts within the limits of their judicial activity, and they use
this tool with an appropriate level of responsibility. The importance of judicial law-making during judicial reform
is determined. Judicial law-making and judicial reform are closely interrelated. One of the manifestations of such
interaction is that the introduction of judicial law-making is a task, direction or result of judicial reform. After
all, judicial law-making is closely related to the strengthening of the judicial system and ensuring the unity and
uniformity of judicial practice. Judicial law-making should be understood as one of the main driving forces in the
transition of law to a new stage of development. Justice and judicial law-making do not contain mutually exclusive
elements. The state and trends of the introduction of judicial law-making into the legal system of Ukraine based on
the results of the last judicial reform are disclosed. Judicial reform as an independent type of state transformation
is an important direction of state building and is aimed at transforming justice into a fair mechanism for resolving
legal conflicts and disputes based on the rule of law. The Ukrainian state has been in a permanent state of judicial
reform for a long time, the effectiveness of which is currently one of the main indicators of assessing our country’s
readiness for integration with the European Union. With each stage of judicial reform in Ukraine, the need for
official recognition of judicial law-making becomes more relevant. The judicial reform of 2016 did not positively
resolve this issue. Currently, the need to introduce judicial law-making is mostly recognized at the doctrinal level,
but is rejected by the legislator.

Key words: law-making, judicial power, justice, judicial practice, judicial law-making, judicial law, reform, state
reform, judicial reform, legal reform.