Dissertation for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Specialty 081 – Law. – National Academy of Internal Affairs, Kyiv, 2025.
This dissertation is devoted to a comprehensive study of the peculiarities of implementing the principle of proportionality in the restriction of an individual’s right to the inviolability of housing or other possessions within the criminal procedure of Ukraine. Taking into account the fundamental requirements of the principle of proportionality, a number of legislative and practical recommendations have been developed to improve the existing criminal procedural safeguards for the legitimate restriction of an individual's right to the inviolability of housing or other possessions.
A comprehensive study has been conducted on the historical origins of the principle of proportionality as an integral component of the legal regulation of social relations. The dissertation examines the features of its formation in the jurisprudence of the Sumerian civilization, Ancient Babylon, Ancient Rome, and Ancient Greece, where the foundations for philosophical and legal reflection on the ideas of justice, balance, and reasonableness in legal relations were laid. Special attention is paid to the division in Roman law of all legal relations into private and public, which is of significant importance in the context of analyzing the principle of proportionality, aimed at ensuring a balance between private and public interests. The use of the principle of proportionality in medieval law is analyzed, particularly in the Magna Carta, adopted in England on June 15, 1215; the 13th-century codification of German law and the compilation of the "Sachsenspiegel"; as well as the legal acts that regulated social relations in the Ukrainian territories during that time – "Ruska Pravda" (1016), the First, Second, and Third Lithuanian Statutes (1529, 1566, 1588, respectively), the Hetman’s Universals of Bohdan Khmelnytsky (1648–1657), and the "Pacts and Constitutions of Rights and Freedoms of the Zaporozhian Host", adopted on April 5, 1710. The significant role of the American War of Independence (1775–1783) and the French Revolution (1789–1799) in the development of Western democracy and the principle of proportionality is highlighted, as these events led to the formation of a new system of societal values, resulting in the adoption of the U.S. Constitution on September 17, 1787, and the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen on August 26, 1789. The fundamental influence of these legal acts on the subsequent development of global jurisprudence is characterized, including the implementation of the principle of proportionality in the Austro-Hungarian and Russian Imperial criminal procedure, which operated in the 19th and early 20th centuries on the territory of modern Ukraine. The period of Soviet totalitarianism is separately examined as one of the most threatening to the implementation of the principle of proportionality. It is established that during this time, any balance between private and public interests in criminal procedural legal relations was completely ignored, replaced by groundless repression and the usurpation of power in the USSR. The development of the principle of proportionality in Ukrainian criminal procedure following the country's acquisition of state independence and the adoption of the current Criminal Procedure Code of Ukraine in 2012 is also analyzed.
