Background
Stanislav Shevchuk was elected to the Constitutional Court of Ukraine (CCU) by Parliament in March 2014 for a nine-year term and became its President in February 2018. In March 2019, three fellow judges circulated an extensive memorandum accusing him of systematically exceeding his authority, creating unlawful freelance advisory positions, engaging in politically charged public statements, interfering with a judge-rapporteur’s work, and other conduct incompatible with judicial independence. The memorandum was quickly leaked to the press, prompting a formal disciplinary process.
Two of the accusers, Judges Sa. and Sl., were among the six judges who formally referred the matter to the CCU’s Standing Commission on Rules and Ethics. Those same two judges then participated as voting members of the Commission, which recommended dismissal. On 14 May 2019, at a special plenary session convened by the Deputy President in Shevchuk’s absence, twelve of the sixteen sitting judges voted by secret ballot to dismiss him from judicial office under constitutional and statutory provisions permitting dismissal for a significant disciplinary offence or gross or systematic neglect of duties.
Shevchuk challenged his dismissal before the administrative courts, which initially granted reinstatement. However, the Constitutional Court issued an interpretative decision in December 2019 holding that none of its decisions—including personnel resolutions—could be appealed before any other court. The Court of Appeal then terminated the reinstatement proceedings, and the Supreme Court upheld that approach, leaving Shevchuk without effective domestic review of the substance of his dismissal.
The Court’s Holding
The Court held that Article 6 § 1 of the Convention applied to the dismissal proceedings. The CCU, when acting as a disciplinary body in the applicant’s case, constituted a “tribunal” within the meaning of Article 6, and the first condition of the Eskelinen test—requiring that domestic law expressly exclude access to a court for the category of official concerned—was not satisfied, so the civil limb of Article 6 was engaged. The Court found a violation of the right to an impartial tribunal: Judges Sa. and Sl. had authored the key accusations against the applicant, formally initiated the disciplinary process, actively pressed those accusations before the Commission, and then voted on the merits of his dismissal at the plenary session. There were no rules at the time requiring their recusal in such circumstances, no mechanism for the applicant’s challenge to their participation to be heard, and no compelling reason why those two judges needed to sit and vote in a case they had themselves instigated.
The Court also found a violation of Article 8 of the Convention. The disciplinary grounds invoked—”significant disciplinary offence” and “gross or systematic neglect of duties incompatible with the status of a judge”—were applied without the clarity and foreseeability required by the Convention. The domestic legal framework in place in 2019 did not clearly define the specific acts constituting disciplinary offences or set out a graduated scheme of proportionate sanctions, making it impossible to foresee with sufficient precision what conduct would attract dismissal, the most severe available penalty. The interference with the applicant’s private life (including his professional identity and career) was therefore not “in accordance with the law.”
These findings were reinforced by the CCU’s own Standing Commission, which concluded in December 2025—after proceedings re-opened on the applicant’s request—that the 2019 disciplinary framework had been insufficiently clear and foreseeable and that the decision to dismiss had been unjustified. The Court treated this subsequent domestic acknowledgment as consistent with its own analysis.
Key Takeaways
- A constitutional court acting as a disciplinary body against one of its own judges is a “tribunal” for Article 6 § 1 purposes, and civil-limb guarantees of impartiality apply unless domestic law expressly and lawfully excludes court review of that category of official.
- Judges who author the initial accusations against a colleague, formally initiate disciplinary proceedings, and then vote to dismiss that colleague on the merits violate the objective impartiality requirement of Article 6 § 1; the absence of any recusal mechanism or procedure for hearing a challenge to their participation compounds the violation.
- Disciplinary rules that do not define the specific conduct constituting an offence or provide a differentiated range of sanctions fail the foreseeability requirement under Article 8, rendering a dismissal based on those rules an interference not “in accordance with the law.”
- A constitutional court’s self-issued interpretative decision insulating all of its own decisions from any external judicial review does not, without more, satisfy the Convention’s access-to-court and impartiality requirements.
Why It Matters
This judgment applies the Convention’s core procedural guarantees directly to the highest level of domestic constitutional adjudication, confirming that supreme or constitutional courts are not exempt from Article 6 impartiality standards when they act as disciplinary bodies against their own members. The ruling makes clear that structural features of constitutional court design—such as the absence of recusal procedures and vaguely drafted disciplinary grounds—can themselves constitute Convention violations, regardless of how institutionally sensitive the affected proceedings are.
For European states with self-disciplining constitutional courts, the decision is a significant prompt to legislate clear recusal rules, codify disciplinary offences with sufficient precision, and establish proportionate sanction schemes—or risk findings that dismissals of sitting judges breach both the right to a fair hearing and the right to private life. The case also adds to the Court’s growing body of case law on judicial independence and the rule of law in post-Soviet legal systems.