PRINCIPLES OF JUDICIAL INDEPENDENCE AND JUDICIAL IMMUNITY IN PRACTICE OF EUROPEAN COURT OF HUMAN RIGHTS

Abstract

The article is dedicated to the research of practice of the European Court of Human Rights on separate cases, which touch independence and inviolability of judicial power. The structural elements of the judicial independence and judicial immunity are described in the article; legal positions of the Council of Europe documents as well as the case law of the European Court of Human Rights are analyzed. Attention is given to the European experience of providing of judicial independence and immunity, as also to the vulnerability of these principles in today’s Europe. Necessity of analysis of possible abuses of independence and inviolability of judges in Ukraine is substantiated. Position, according to which independence of the judicial power is extraordinary needed in the democratic state, and existing of judge’s immunity is considered to be one of the most important features of the rule-of-law state, is grounded in the article. Separate attention is paid to the decision of the European Court on Human Rights in case «Alexander Volkov v. Ukraine», in regard of the problems in the Ukrainian national judicial system.