Year: 2020
Type: article
Abstract: The article is devoted to the study of the peculiarities of providing free legal aid in Ukraine and the European UnionCountries.The article reveals the evolution of theoretical ideas about the essence of free legal aid, ensuring the human right to free legal aid, reveals the role and place of free legal aid in the mechanism of protection of human and civil rights and freedoms, the principles of its provision in Ukraine and the European Union; the subjects of free legal aid and their legal services in the mechanism of ensuring human and civil rights and freedoms are analyzed; describes the legal status of the category of citizens who has the right to receive free legal aid to Ukraine, as well as the peculiarities of its provision in the European Union and who, as a rule, apply for such assistance to local centers for free secondary legal aid; international legal standards, experience of socially effective and high-quality free legal aid are compared with the system of free legal aid in Ukraine.The article proves that the state policy in the field of free legal aid is based on the relevant principles, namely: the rule of law; legality; availability of free legal aid; ensuring the quality of free legal aid; guaranteed state funding.Particular attention in the article is paid to clarifying the activities of the subjects of free legal aid in Ukraine and the categories of persons entitled to receive free primary and secondary legal aid.The article analyzes the features of the Law of Ukraine "On Free Legal Aid" in comparison with the legislation and practice of the European Court of Human Rights in recent years, UN documents, the conclusions of the Venice Commission.An approach is proposed according to which the subjective right to free legal aid includes a positive obligation of the state to provide it, which gives the state a sufficiently wide discretion to control the quality of such assistance.This, in turn, can pose certain threats to the advocacy independence.In addition, a large part of the population, and especially its vulnerable groups, still have a low level of legal awareness about solving their problems in a legal way, which stimulates corruption, inhibits the active participation of this part of citizens in economic life, provokes and supports poverty.
Source: State and Regions Series Law
Authors: I. M. Legan, K. S. Bondarenko
Institutions: State Tax University, Zhytomyr Polytechnic State University
Language: English
Subfield: Law
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W3093976953