The dissertation is devoted to the historical and legal research of the process of formation and development of the system of judicial organization and legal proceedings of the Ukrainian lands from the second half of the IX – to the beginning of the XXI century. The dissertation characterizes and systematizes the state of scientific research of the problem of formation of judicial institutions on the territory of Ukraine. It has been established that subjectivism in covering the approaches of the organization of the judiciary is tendentious for all studies, as it was natural to try to «idealize» the process of formation of the judiciary. The main methodological approaches to the disclosure of the content and nature of the traditional for the Ukrainian legal culture principles of the organization of the judicial system and the judiciary are proposed. Characterizing the preconditions and nature of the formation of the judicial system in the pre-state period and the time of Kievan Rus, determining the relationship of customary and written law and their implementation in the judicial system of the IX – XII centuries, argued that the judiciary , and therefore in the process of evolution the traditional approaches and principles of the judiciary and judicial procedure were established, which maneuvered between the general democracy and the subordination of the court to the central government. Evidence of the effectiveness and efficiency of the legal norms of Kievan Rus, including the system of justice and judicial system was their implementation in the legal system of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, which included most of the ethnic Ukrainian lands. Following the patterns and identifying trends in the transformation of the judicial system and the judiciary of Ukrainian lands in terms of their inclusion in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, the Kingdom of Poland, and with the year of the Commonwealth, argued that adopted during the XVII century. The statutes of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania marked the beginning of the formation of the national consciousness of the Ukrainian, Belarusian and Lithuanian peoples, which included the postulate of the role of judicial institutions as fundamental for monitoring the rights and freedoms of all classes. Determining the nature, the basic principles of the organization of the traditional Ukrainian judicial system during the establishment of the Hetmanate, as well as the content and trends of judicial reform in the XVIII century. Arguments were made that the four-tier system of the judiciary included the Hetman's court, the General Staff's Council, regimental courts, and hundreds of courts, and was characterized by excessive centralization of activity and direct subordination to higher courts. All these judicial institutions were a confirmation of the constant attraction of Ukrainians to the norms of customary law and the ideologues of «truth» and «justice» realized in it. A key episode in the development of the Hetmanate's judiciary is P. Orlyk's Constitution, the first document in world history to record the division of power into legislative, executive, and judicial, and to determine their independent status. The evolution of legal thought and views on the process of organization of the judiciary can also be traced to the judicial reforms of P. Polubotko, D. Apostol and K. Rozumovsky, the content of which resembled the best European practices of the time.
