The Constitutional Court finds itself in a stalemate in the case of lawyer's declaration

The Second Senate of the Constitutional Court, which was supposed to consider the case on the constitutional complaint of Oksana Bukhtoyarova regarding the constitutionality of submitting declarations by representatives of the disciplinary bodies of the bar, turned out to be incompetent.

The peculiarities of the proceedings in this case were reported by the press service of the Constitutional Court.

Today, on February 14, the Second Senate began oral proceedings in the case concerning the constitutionality of the fifteenth paragraph of the first part of Article 1, subparagraph «c» of paragraph 2 of part one of Article 3, part one of Article 45, part one of Article 51-1 of the Law of Ukraine «On Prevention of Corruption», paragraph 1 of part one of Article 238 of the Code of Administrative Procedure of Ukraine.

As a reminder, we are talking about the provisions of the law, which the National Agency for the Prevention of Corruption interprets in an expanded way so that lawyers whose activities are not a priori related to the performance of state or local government functions are subject to declaration. The applicant in the case (a member of the Disciplinary Chamber of the Qualification and Disciplinary Commission of the Bar of Zakarpattia Oblast) received a notice from the NACP of the fact of failure to submit a declaration for 2020 as a person authorized to perform state and local government functions and of her obligation to submit such a declaration in accordance with the Law on Prevention of Corruption.

During today's plenary session, Maksym Dyrdin, the permanent representative of the Verkhovna Rada to the Constitutional Court, recused Serhiy Holovatyi, Second Senate Judge.

According to part 1 of Article 36 of the Law «On the Constitutional Court of Ukraine», the Senate should consist of nine judges. But the Second Senate is currently operating with only six judges, which is critical for its authority.

According to the law, a meeting at which the issue of recusal of a judge is to be considered is valid if at least six judges from the Senate are present. The decision to disqualify a judge is made in the Senate without the participation of the judge in question. In view of this, the Second Senate was not authorized to consider the issue of recusal, and therefore the Chairman of the meeting announced a break.

The CC reported that in addition to the above-mentioned persons, the plenary session was also attended by the President's representative in the CC Serhii Dembovskyi, UNBA representative Maryna Stavniychuk, acting head of the NACP Yaroslav Lyubchenko and other citizens.

The open part of the plenary session can be viewed here.