In order to unify the economic, civil and administrative processes in 2017, changes were made to the Commercial Procedural Code of Ukraine, the Civil Procedure Code of Ukraine and the Code of Administrative Proceeding of Ukraine. New participants have appeared in all lawsuits, but most in the business process. Following the 2019 presidential election, the directions of judicial reform were reconsid¬ered. Among the proposed amendments to the Commercial Procedural Code of Ukraine is a proposal to recognize as evidence the opinion of a legal expert. In our opinion, resolving this issue is key to fully determining the procedural status of a legal expert. Involvement of a legal expert is used whenever the court needs to interpret the law by a qualified professional. The main purpose of a legal expert in court proceedings is to provide legal assistance-consultation, drawn up in the form of a written opinion, within the limits and in the manner prescribed by the Code of Civil Procedure of Ukraine, namely on issues requir¬ing special knowledge in international law and doctrinal interpretation rights and practices of its application. Today, legal (judicial) practice does not produce a single model of such a procedural docu¬ment as an expert opinion in the field of law, and therefore use slightly modified by legal professionals standardized forms of forensic examinations that grossly violate the integrity, structure, methodology, textual logic, regulations and compliance of the conclusion with the requirements of the legislation defined in the procedural legislation. It is concluded that the involvement of a legal expert has certain advantages over other ways of establishing the content of foreign law. In particular, according to the time of obtaining the information necessary for further consideration of the case in court, this path is shorter than other paths defined by the Law of Ukraine “On Private International Law”. At the same time, it should be noted that the issue of impartiality and competence of a legal expert, etc. remains open.Also, for a comprehensive settlement of relations concerning the participation in the trial of a legal expert, in our opinion, the Code of Civil Procedure of Ukraine should provide a rule that the court must make a separate court decision if it finds that the legal expert gave a false conclusion, for example , on the content of foreign law.
Read full abstract