THE IMMUNITY OF JUDGES OF THE CONSTITUTIONAL COURT OF UKRAINE: IS IT A GUARANTEE OF INDEPENDENCE OR A WAY TO AVOID RESPONSIBILITY?

Abstract

On December 29, 2020, at the request of the Acting Prosecutor General of Ukraine, the President of Ukraine issued Decree № 607/2020 on the removal of Oleksandr Tupytskyi, a judge of the Constitutional Court of Ukraine, for a period of two months. Thus, for the first time in the history of Ukraine, the President used the powers provided for in part three of Article 154 of the Criminal Procedure Code of Ukraine in relation to a judge of the Constitutional Court of Ukraine. This step provoked quite heated discussions in the legal community. After all, the Constitution of Ukraine does not give the President the right to “remove from office a judge of the Constitutional Court”. In addition, it should be noted that neither the Constitution of Ukraine, nor the Law of Ukraine “On the Constitutional Court of Ukraine”, nor the Rules of Procedure of the Constitutional Court of Ukraine regulate the issue of temporary removal from office of a judge of the Constitutional Court of Ukraine. In the context of the transformation of Ukrainian society and the system of state power, the Constitutional Court of Ukraine has a crucial role to play in ensuring the supremacy of the Constitution, guaranteeing the constitutional order and ensuring human rights and freedoms. The extremely important role of the body of constitutional justice determines the need to ensure its independence. That is why guarantees of the independence of judges of the Constitutional Court of Ukraine are an extremely important issue today. The article is devoted to the analysis of the institute of immunity of judges of the Constitutional Court of Ukraine. The issue of the constitutionality of the decree of the President of Ukraine on the temporary removal of a judge of the Constitutional Court of Ukraine from office is investigated. The focus is on the immunity of a judge of the Constitutional Court of Ukraine in criminal proceedings. The current legislation of Ukraine on the possibility of applying to a judge of the Constitutional Court of Ukraine such a measure of criminal proceedings as removal from office was analyzed, the relevant gaps and contradictions were identified.