Rules for the organization an eﬀective civil proceedings as uniﬁed standards for solving procedural issues
Authors: Koroied Serhii 
Published: January 2025

Introduction: The problem of the existence and application by courts of document «Rules for the Organization of Eﬀective Civil Proceedings in the Kyiv Court of Appeal» (2023) as a source of civil procedural law of Ukraine is considered. This problem is due to the fact that the specified Rules are not included in the system of legislation on civil justice, their legal force and the order of «implementation» in the work of the Kyiv Court of Appeal remains in question, as well as the rules of conduct defined in them in the aspect of introducing new mechanisms for ensuring eﬀective civil proceedings in Ukraine. In addition, no legislative acts authorize courts and other subjects to adopt and implement such Rules in the courts of individual regions, and courts to apply such Rules in parallel with acts of civil procedural legislation, because even in the conditions of the legal regime of martial law, courts, bodies and institutions of the justice system act exclusively on the basis, within the limits of authority and in the manner determined by the Constitution of Ukraine and by the laws of Ukraine.

The purpose of the article: The purpose of the article is a scientific and practical analysis of the document «Rules for the Organization of Eﬀective Civil Proceedings in the Kyiv Court of Appeal» (2023), primarily from the point of view of compliance with the declared objective of their content in the aspect of introducing new mechanisms for ensuring eﬀective civil proceedings.
Results: The results of the study are based on a systematic analysis of the provisions of the Civil Procedural Code of Ukraine, the theoretical foundations of the civil procedure and the text of the mentioned Rules. The legal force and possible place of the specified Rules in the system of sources of civil procedural law, as well as the «objectives» of these Rules, are determined. The description of certain provisions of the Rules, which contradict the norms of the Civil Code of Ukraine or duplicate them, is given.

It was established that the specified Rules cannot be attributed to any of the types of sources of civil procedural law; they are not included in the system of legislation on civil justice. These Rules should be considered only as recommendations (non-observance of which is not a «violation of the rules of procedural law», that is, it is not a basis for challenging court judgments or applying any negative consequences to the participants in the case) with non-binding rules of conduct for the court and the participants in the case, which legally cannot ensure that the court fulfills the objectives of civil proceedings. The content of these Rules indicates that «eﬀective civil proceedings» must be ensured by the participants in the case, actually exempting the court from responsibility for «ineﬀective» civil proceedings. The role of the court (judge) in ensuring eﬀective justice is not clearly defined. Areas of ensuring the eﬀectiveness of civil proceedings are not structured.

According to the results of a systematic analysis of the content of the specified Rules, attention is drawn to the fact that not only the legal force, but also the practical value of the developed Rules causes many comments, since the Rules do not contain any new tools or new recommendations for the interpretation of the relevant procedural norms (diﬀerent from the existing conclusions of the Supreme Court), which could really ensure eﬀective civil proceedings or increase the eﬀectiveness of the latter in comparison with the procedural regulation existing today.

Conclusions: Given the existence of such Rules (recommendations), they should not be about detailing procedural issues already regulated in the Civil Code of Ukraine, but about unified approaches to solving «procedural issues» precisely through the introduction of a unified interpretation and unified approach in the legal assessment of possible procedural situations. Such objective could be accomplished by issue a structured by relevant procedural issues (chapters) «collection» of relevant conclusions of the Supreme Court and of the decisions of Council of Judges of Ukraine, which would allow judges to directly apply the relevant conclusions of the Supreme Court and decisions of the Council of Judges of Ukraine, rather than being guided by Rules that are not included in the system of legislation on civil proceedings.

Key words: civil proceedings, rules, eﬀectiveness, trial, eﬃciency, timeliness, procedural form, procedural issues, standards, court, participants in the case.