Drawing on contemporary methods of scholarly inquiry, the dissertation examines the theoretical and legal foundations of commercial justice, traces its emergence and development, and analyses its influence on the practice of resolving commercial disputes. Commercial justice is treated as the national counterpart of the concept developed in the legal doctrine of foreign States belonging to the Romano-Germanic and Anglo-Saxon legal traditions.
For the purposes of this study, commercial disputes are understood as legal disputes arising in connection with the conduct of entrepreneurial activity, the conclusion and performance of commercial contracts, the circulation of property, as well as corporate, investment, financial and other relations characteristic of a market economy. The system of commercial justice, in its theoretical and legal sense, encompasses the administration of justice by State courts — including in mixed-bench forms combining professional judges with persons possessing special expertise in commercial turnover (commercial judges) — international commercial arbitration and domestic arbitration (tretejskyi rozghliad), as well as related legal mechanisms for the settlement of disputes, whether integrated into court proceedings or applied autonomously, in particular mediation.
In the context of European integration, the capacity of the State to ensure effective, predictable and professional resolution of disputes in the sphere of commercial relations directly shapes the investment attractiveness and competitiveness of Ukraine. Domestic legal doctrine and the legislation of Ukraine currently in force operate predominantly with the concept of economic justice (hospodarske sudochynstvo), shaped under the influence of the category of economic activity. In legal systems with established traditions of market economy, by contrast, the concept of commercial justice is employed, embracing a range of jurisdictional and related legal mechanisms for the resolution and settlement of commercial disputes and not confined to the procedural activity of State courts.
Commercial justice as a system for resolving disputes in the sphere of commercial relations has not yet become the subject of comprehensive theoretical and legal research in contemporary Ukrainian legal scholarship, since both doctrine and law-application practice continue to associate the resolution of such disputes primarily with the activity of the economic courts. This approach does not fully capture the institutional diversity of mechanisms for protecting the rights of participants in commercial relations. Against this background, the theoretical and legal substantiation of commercial justice as an autonomous legal category contributes to the development of legal scholarship, to the improvement of law-application practice and to determining the prospects for further development of the system for resolving commercial disputes in Ukraine.
The growing complexity of commercial relations, the increasing number of disputes involving foreign business entities, the spread of digital forms of contract conclusion and performance, and the development of investment and financial instruments all reinforce the need for scholarly understanding of commercial justice as a complex legal phenomenon. Its study has both theoretical and applied significance for the further improvement of the judicial system of Ukraine, for ensuring effective access to justice, for enhancing the quality and predictability of judicial decisions, and for the development of international commercial arbitration, domestic arbitration, mediation and other means of settling disputes in the sphere of commercial relations.
The aim of the study is to develop a coherent theoretical and legal conception of commercial justice as an autonomous category encompassing the totality of jurisdictional mechanisms for resolving disputes in the sphere of commercial relations and of related legal mechanisms for their settlement, as well as to formulate scientifically substantiated proposals for the development of the corresponding
system in Ukraine with regard to historical preconditions, comparative legal experience and the European-integration commitments of the State. In pursuit of this aim, the dissertation analyses the historical and legal preconditions for the formation of commercial justice; clarifies its legal nature and its relationship with economic justice; identifies the system of State and non-State mechanisms for resolving commercial disputes; examines foreign models of commercial-court organisation; substantiates approaches to introducing mixed benches; and formulates proposals for improving the constitutional, substantive-law and procedural foundations for the resolution of commercial disputes in Ukraine.
