April 1, 2025
Acting Chairman of the Constitutional Court of Ukraine (hereinafter, the “Court”) Oleksandr Petryshyn, Judges of the Court Vasyl Lemak and Oksana Hryshchuk, judicial assistants and scientific consultants, employees of the Court's Secretariat, international experts, and legal practitioners took part in the seminar “Legal Reasoning: Mastery of Forming Court Decisions” on 29-30 March 2025.
The key objective of the seminar was to study modern principles of legal argumentation and methods of structuring court decisions. During the event, the participants analysed exemplary decisions of the constitutional courts of Ukraine and other countries to determine the best practices of presenting arguments and logical reasoning, and introducing innovative approaches to law enforcement.
The seminar was opened by Oleksandr Petryshyn, Acting Chairman of the Court. Mr Petryshyn expressed his gratitude to the international partners for the opportunity to hold professional meetings to exchange views and practical experience on many important issues of constitutional justice. “Legal argumentation and formation of court decisions is crucial in the activities of each court, so the development of new ideas and strategies will serve to create clear, consistent and convincing court decisions of the constitutional control body of Ukraine,” said the Acting Chairman of the Court.
Viktor Beschastnyy, Head of the Court's Secretariat, highlighted the long-standing and fruitful cooperation between the constitutional jurisdiction of Ukraine and the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), which has been going on since the beginning of the Court's activities. He noted that during this time, a number of important joint projects aimed at improving access to constitutional justice have been implemented, and more than 90 events have been held to exchange professional experience.
The event, which was organised within the framework of the joint project “Support to National Stakeholders in Enhancing Accessibility of Constitutional Justice” of the OSCE Support Programme for Ukraine, consisted of several sessions.
The event was moderated by Oleksandr Vodyannikov, Senior Project Associate of the OSCE Support Programme for Ukraine, Olena Boryslavska, Chair of the Department of Constitutional Law at the Law Faculty of Ivan Franko National University of Lviv, and Mykhailo Savchyn, Professor at Uzhhorod National University.
During the first panel discussion “The Art and Science of Legal Argumentation”, the participants focused on the key principles of legal argumentation, the importance of clarity in judgments, and the evolution of judicial practice. The interactive discussion touched upon the structure of court decisions, its main components and focused on the comparative analysis of landmark decisions.
“Modern Challenges and Innovations in Court Argumentation” was the topic of the second session. The participants discussed textual, historical, teleological approaches to judicial argumentation; the combination of traditional formalism with the interpretation of law; current issues in judicial practice, integration of legal precedents and new approaches to the formation of judgments.
The integration of legal precedents and constitutional norms was discussed during the third session. Participants analysed methods of harmonising different sources of law in the face of modern challenges. Attention was also paid to the issue of applying the case law of the European Court of Human Rights, the European Court of Justice and foreign constitutional authorities in the decisions of the constitutional authority.
The event featured a practical session “From Draft to Final Decision”, which focused on the process of drafting and structuring the Court's decisions.
Supreme Court Justice Dmytro Hudyma, Member of the High Council of Justice Dmytro Lukianov, Associate Professor of the Department of Justice at the Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv, Head of the National Mediation and Conciliation Service Dmytro Kukhniuk were the panelists of the event.
