Quarterly Progress Report: FAIR, Accountable, Independent, and Responsible (FAIR) Judiciary Program in Ukraine

The program aimed to support legislative, regulatory, and institutional reform of judicial institutions in order to build a foundation for a more accountable and independent judiciary. The overall goal of the FAIR project is to support the development of a constitutional, legislative, and regulatory framework for judicial reform that is compliant with European and international norms, and that supports judicial accountability and independence. The project focuses on five main objectives: development of a constitutional, legislative, and regulatory framework for judicial reform; strengthening the accountability and transparency of key judicial institutions and operations; strengthening the professionalism and effectiveness of the Ukrainian judiciary; strengthening the role of civil society organizations as advocates for and monitors of judicial reform; and supporting the implementation of the Law on the Purification of Government. Under Objective 3, the professionalism and effectiveness of the Ukrainian judiciary were strengthened. FAIR accomplished an important achievement in this reporting period by completing the second round of the Judicial Administration Certificate Program. Forty competitively selected Ukrainian court administrators completed 60 in-class hours that increased their knowledge, skills, and abilities to effectively manage the courts. This program was implemented by the State Judicial Administration (SJA) in partnership with the Moscow State University (MSU) and the National School of Judiciary (NSJ). The program aimed to equip court administrators with the necessary knowledge and skills to manage the courts effectively. The students proposed using primary methods and approaches in their projects, including human resource management, performance management and appraisals, education, training and development, employee motivation, access to justice, public outreach and communication, and case-flow management technology. On June 17, 2015, the 40 court administrators received MSU and NSJ certificates for their successful completion of the Judicial Administration Certificate Program. In addition, FAIR worked to improve the quality of legal education in Ukraine. As of today, legal education in Ukraine faces serious challenges, such as low quality of legal training, law schools' failure to meet modern legal job market demands, and Ukrainian law schools' leadership poor understanding of a quickly changing professional environment coupled with a lack of capacity to compete in today's global world. FAIR's effort to address these challenges includes assistance to the Ivan Franko Lviv National University Law School (LNU Law School), following the recommendations of the assessment report prepared as a result of the first-ever in Ukraine independent external on-site legal education quality assessment, which took place in May 2014. To this end, on June 12 and 13, 2015, FAIR supported the initiative of the Ivan Franko Lviv National University and in cooperation with the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine (MOE) conducted the International Conference "Modern Trends in Legal Education" in Lviv. The conference aimed to discuss modern trends in legal education and to develop recommendations for improving the quality of legal education in Ukraine. The FAIR program has achieved significant outcomes, including the assistance to 536 courts covering every region of Ukraine, targeted programming provided to 31 civil society organizations, promotion of 32 amendments to Ukrainian legislation to enhance judicial independence, training of 1,967 judges and judicial personnel, development of 12 new legal courses and curricula, engagement of 399 justice sector personnel in long-term strategic planning for the judiciary, support to two national tests of 3,474 and 2,348 judicial candidates respectively, selection of 942 judges through new merit-based procedure, engagement of 14,950 citizens in the process of monitoring and oversight of court performance, involvement of 212 courts in the process of complex court performance evaluation, and support to the development of more than 900 civil society recommendations developed to improve court functions.