Genesis of humanitarian and criminal-procedural protection of human rights in the Ukrainian lands: from the Rus’ka Pravda to the Lithuanian Statutes

Abstract

The relevance of this study lies in the fact that modern society has challenges in the sphere of criminal procedural protection of human rights and therefore society needs to understand the way this protection was developed throughout history. Modern law has managed to make great steps of development but its humanitarian principles have their roots in the legal systems of Kyivan Rus and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania that existed centuries ago. The Ukrainian lands received one of their first codified laws through Rus’ka Pravda which protected human life and honor and property rights and family rights through its basic mechanisms of criminal responsibility that used proportional sanctions and restorative compensation and social justice principles. The study of medieval legal norms shows that social consensus and customary law played a crucial role in building legal protection systems which later evolved into the codified laws of Lithuanian statutory law.

The judicial growth in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania led to the complex combination of the native customs with foreign legal elements and Ruthenian law of Lithuanian origin was based on Old Russian legislation but it slowly adopted European legal concepts. The three Lithuanian Statutes that were published in 1529, 1566 and 1588 brought in enhanced court procedures that allowed defense attorneys to represent clients, and established formal evidence rules and established appeal processes for pertinent court issues with fair trial rights and restriction of local official arbitrariness.

According to the study of the law between then and now the medieval rules had some of the fundamental aspects of human rights, such as protection of individuals in court, checks on the abuse of power, the right to legal counsel and protection of excessive punishment. In a nutshell, the criminal court protection which developed in Ukrainian territory goes back to long ago and is essential to know in order to know how contemporary armed conflict and domestic law view human rights protection. The review of law and history of such documents as Rus’ka Pravda and Lithuanian Statutes demonstrates the gradual evolution of protective mechanisms and allows us to find conceptual parallels with modern legal institutions which make this historical experience an important background to further legal evolution and scientific knowledge of the mechanisms of human rights protection.