| Established | 2016  (7 years ago) |
|---|---|
| Types | association |
| Country | Ukraine |
| Website | en |
Dejure Foundation or Dejure (from the legal de jure or Democracy Justice Reforms), created in 2016, [1] is a Ukrainian non-governmental organisation that promotes judicial reform in Ukraine. [2] Dejure analyses judges' integrity based on their records and monitors legal developments related to the judiciary of Ukraine. [1] [3]
Dejure Foundation was co-founded in 2016 by former judge at Vinnytsia District Court, Mykhailo Zhernakov, together with a former attorney and a civil society activist. [1]
The name Dejure was chosen to have the double meaning of the legal term de jure , and as an acronym for Democracy Justice Reforms. [1]
Dejure aims at helping to reconstruct the judiciary of Ukraine in a way that reduces the level of corruption in Ukraine. One of Dejure's methods is to collect information and the background, asset declarations, known real assets, and conduct of Ukrainian judges. [1] Dejure also monitors proposed laws related to the Ukrainian judicial system. [3]
Mykhailo Zhernakov is one of the 2016 co-founders of Dejure, [1] and was Chair of the Board As of July 2022 [update] . [4] As of 2019 [update] , Iryna Shyba, a lawyer and feminist, has been Executive Director since 2019. [5]
Dejure was one of the non-governmental organisations that played a key role in helping to support the legal and practical creation of the High Anti-Corruption Court of Ukraine, one of the new anti-corruption institutions established in Ukraine in the 2010s. [2] In 2020, the European Endowment for Democracy described Dejure's role in judicial reform in Ukraine as "crucial". [3]
In 2020, Zhernakov of Dejure stated that many judges who had failed Dejure's integrity checks had not been dismissed, but "some of the most corrupt judges" had been removed as a result of Dejure's analyses, and Dejure's information distribution made "engag[ing] in illegal activities such as corruption or tax fraud ... more and more uncomfortable" for the judges. He felt that Dejure had "raised the integrity level" of Ukrainian judges. [1]
In 2021, Dejure objected to the Ethics Council's decisions in confirming several judges to the Supreme Council of Justice that Dejure and other civil society organisations, including Anti-Corruption Action Center, saw as having records lacking integrity and of having persecuted whistleblowers and anti-corruption activists. Dejure also obected to the Ethics Council's decision not to appoint Larysa Golnyk to the Supreme Council of Justice. Dejure described Golnyk as being seen by "many Ukrainians" as "the symbol of honesty, resilience and zero tolerance for any manifestations of corruption". [6]
In 2022, during the 2022 Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Zhernakov claimed that Ukrainian civil society had "played an outsized role in [Ukraine's] progress over the [preceding] few decades" and "prove[d] itself during the" invasion as a significant component of Ukrainian society. [4]
In 2021, Dejure Foundation was the winner of Prospect 's "Democracy and Law Award" and overall "Think Tank of the Year Award". [7]
The politics of Ecuador are multi-party. The central government polity is a quadrennially elected presidential, unicameral representative democracy. The President of Ecuador is head of state and head of the army on a multi-party system, and leads a cabinet with further executive power. Legislative power is not limited to the National Assembly, as it may to a lesser degree be exercised by the executive which consists of the President convening an appointed executive cabinet. Subsequent acts of the National Assembly are supreme over Executive Orders where sufficient votes have been cast by the legislators. The judiciary is independent of the executive and the legislature. Ecuador is also considered a constitutional republic.
The judicial system of Ukraine is outlined in the 1996 Constitution of Ukraine. Before this there was no notion of judicial review nor any Supreme court since 1991's Ukrainian independence when it started being slowly restructured.
The Supreme Court of Ukraine is the highest judicial body in the system of courts of general jurisdiction in Ukraine.
The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) is the parliamentary arm of the Council of Europe, a 46-nation international organisation dedicated to upholding human rights, democracy and the rule of law.
The High Judicial and Prosecutorial Council of Bosnia and Herzegovina, HJPC BiH is the national council of the judiciary of Bosnia and Herzegovina. It is the self-regulatory body of the judiciary in the country, tasked with guaranteeing its independence, with countrywide competences over the administration and career management of judicial office holders. It is based on the continental tradition of self-management of the judiciary.
The judiciary of Malta interprets and applies the laws of Malta, to ensure equal justice under law, and to provide a mechanism for dispute resolution. The legal system of Malta is based partially on English law and partly on Continental law, whilst also being subject to European Union law.
Mark Lawrence Wolf is a Senior Judge for the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts and founder and chair of Integrity Initiatives International.
The Constitutional Court of the Republic of Indonesia is one of the apex courts in Indonesia along with the Indonesian Supreme Court. Its primary role is reviewing the constitutionality of Acts (undang-undang). It also has other functions, including resolving disputes over the powers of state institutions, settling disputes over the results of general elections, deciding on the dissolution of political parties, and supervising impeachment. The last two functions have never been exercised by the Court.
The Supreme Council of Justice is the national council of the judiciary of Ukraine, which nominates judges to be appointed by the President of Ukraine. In 2021, the Ethics Council was created with the intention of selecting the members of the Supreme Council of Justice in a way that would help to create an independent and efficient judiciary in Ukraine.
Willy Munyoki Mutunga is a Kenyan lawyer, intellectual, reform activist, and was the Commonwealth Special Envoy to the Maldives. He is also an active member of the Justice Leadership Group. He is the retired Chief Justice of Kenya and President of the Supreme Court of Kenya.
Corruption is an issue in Ukrainian society often tied to a troubled relationship with Russia going back to the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. Since regaining independence from Russia, Ukraine has faced a series of politicians, criminal bosses, and oligarchs who used the corruption of police, political parties, and industry to gain power. Eventual public outcry against corruption led to the Euromaidan uprising.
Sir Anthony Hooper, PC is a British judge (retired), former professor of law, and a member of Matrix Chambers. He joined Matrix Chambers in 2013 after his retirement from the Court of Appeal of England and Wales. In 2013 he was appointed inaugural Judicial Fellow of the Judicial Institute of University College, London, where he is an Honorary Professor. He is an Honorary Fellow at Trinity hall, Cambridge. Since 2018, he has been helping to fight corruption and to reform judicial system in Ukraine.
The Centre of Policy and Legal Reform is a Ukrainian non-governmental think tank founded in 1996.
The CEELI Institute is an independent, non-profit, non-governmental organization for advancing the rule of law. It was founded in 1999 and located at the Villa Grebovka, Prague, Czech Republic. In July 2022, Russia designated CEELI Institute as an "undesirable organisation".
Corruption in Azerbaijan is considered high and occurs at all levels of government. In Transparency International's 2022 Corruption Perceptions Index, which ranked 180 countries from those perceived to be least corrupt to those perceived to be very corrupt, Azerbaijan was ranked 128, compared to 45 for its northwestern neighbor Georgia and 58 for its western neighbor Armenia. In the Azerbaijani laundromat money-laundering scheme, $2.9 billion was paid to foreign politicians and Azerbaijani elites by companies linked to Azerbaijani ruler Ilham Aliyev, government ministries, and the International Bank of Azerbaijan between 2012 and 2014. Azerbaijan is a member of Group of States Against Corruption (GRECO) and OECD's Anti-Corruption Network.
Iryna Valentynivna Venediktova is a Ukrainian politician, academic, and lawyer, previously a prosecutor general of Ukraine from March 2020 to July 2022. She was the first woman to hold the office and was suspended on 17 July 2022 by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. On 19 July, Venediktova was dismissed following a vote in the Verkhovna Rada, which was tabled by Zelenskyy, and pointing to the presence of personnel collaborating with occupying Russian forces within her agency.
Judicial reform in Ukraine is a set of legislative, institutional and personnel changes aimed at improving the Judiciary of Ukraine.
Larysa Golnyk is a Ukrainian judge at Oktyabrysky District Court in Poltava. She is a whistleblower against corruption of the Ukrainian judiciary. Golnyk was refused membership of the Ukrainian Supreme Council of Justice by the Ethics Council in June 2022 because of a Facebook post in which she criticised her colleagues for an illegal re-election of the chair of the Oktyabrsky District Court.
The Ukrainian Ethics Council is a legal body of three Ukrainian and three international members created in 2021 to appoint members of the Supreme Council of Justice. Anti-corruption organisations AutoMaidan, Dejure, and Anti-Corruption Action Center criticised the council's June 2022 appointments as including "tainted" judges and for refusing a well-known anti-corruption judge and whistleblower, Larysa Golnyk.
Andriy Yevhenovych Kostin is a Ukrainian lawyer and politician. As of 2022, he is a People's Deputy of Ukraine since he was elected to it 2019. Kostin was a candidate in the 2021 competition to become the new head of the Ukrainian Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office (SAPO). Civil society organisations Transparency International Ukraine, Automaidan, Anti-Corruption Action Center and Dejure stated that Kostin did not satisfy the integrity criteria of the competition. Kostin was not selected. Kostin was the Head of the Verkhovna Rada Legal Policy Committee for two years, from 2020 to 2022. On 27 July 2022, Kostin was voted by the Verkhovna Rada as the Prosecutor General of Ukraine.