THE COOPERATION OF A JUDGE AND THE PARTIES IN THE CIVIL PROCEDURE IN EUROPEAN STATES: GENERAL APPROACHES
In: Bulletin of Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv. Legal Studies, Heft 109, S. 19-22
This paper studies the principles of good faith and the cooperation between judges and parties, which are considered as highly relevant in current civil procedural law. According to many scholars, a new approach to defining their roles allows to overcome the basic urgent problems of modern civil justice – duration, high costs and, to some extent, the complexity of the trial. At the same time, its implementation leads to a positive impact on ensuring the efficiency and access to justice, which are integral parts of the rule of law. The evolution of the idea of directing litigation to peaceful compromise of parties and settling their dispute, has become of tremendous importance since the middle of the last century and today is considered as one of the inherent features of modern litigation. The idea ofgood faith in participating in the process was much developed in the first codes of civil procedure in Europe, in particular, in Austrian Code of Civil Procedure of 1898 and in French Code of Civil Procedure of 1806. The national legal doctrine contains the reflection of F. Klein's research, in particular the loyal cooperation between a judge's and parties' ideas. Later the national legislation of most European states applied the abovementioned during the reforms. Within the ELI-Unidroit Project of European Rules of Civil Procedure the Working Group on Procedural Rights used the idea of court and parties cooperation as the main ground and proposed to joint responsibility introduce with the aim of fair and just trial and avoiding of the traditional problems of two procedure models (A. Uzelac). The provisions of civil procedural law of many states, in particular of Ukraine, have more fully realized the idea of inadmissibility of abusing the procedural rights, which are justly regarded as an element of the principle of cooperation of the court and the parties in civil proceedings.