Interregional Academy of Personnel Management

Today, March 17, IAPM Discussion Club  visited the deputy chairman of the Supreme Administrative Court of Ukraine Mikhail Smokovich.

Michael Smokovich - Deputy Chairman of the Supreme Administrative Court of Ukraine, Doctor of Law, Associate Professor. He graduated from the Kharkiv Law Academy. His public career began in specialty Senior investigator, investigator for particularly important cases of the Lutsk Prosecutor's Office. Later, Mikhail took a Senior prosecutor of the Prosecutor's Office Department of Volyn region and a Senior assistant prosecutor in Lutsk. In December 2003 he was appointed a judge of the Supreme Administrative Court of Ukraine, for which he came after two years as a judge of the Appeal Court of the Volyn region.

At the beginning of the speech, Mikhail told the students of IAPM anf of the Economics and Law at the College about memories and experiences:

"Investigator is an interesting job. Although investigator is the lowest link in the judicial hierarchy, but many factors depend on its professionalism. If the evidence was collected by the investigation professionally, lawyer will not be able to refute them".

Then Michael Smokovich familiarized students with history, structure and main directions of work of the Supreme Administrative Court of Ukraine. According to the speaker the main task of the administrative proceedings is the protection of the rights and legitimate interests of the person in public law disputes from abuses by government, local authorities or officials. Deputy Chairman cited statistics on the number of vessels in the Supreme Administrative Court. So, at the time of establishment in 2005, the structure of organization included 18 judges, accounting for 30,000 cases consideration. Today the court includes 79 judges and there are 18 vacancies. Smokovich also noted that 69% of administrative cases had obtained a positive decision in favor of citizens in Ukraine:

"Compared with Germany, where only one of ten cases receives a positive decision in favor of citizens, in Ukraine 7 cases get a positive decision".

At the end of the meeting Mikhail Smokovich made a proposal to hold a lecture at the Academy on topic of regulation of customs and electoral disputes, rule of law, judicial reform, and others. Deputy Chairman of the Supreme Administrative Court stated that if theory is not applied in practice, it is dead. So, lectures for students should be carried out not only by theoretics, but also by practicions.

The Acting Rector of IAPM Nikolai Kurko thanked for an interesting conversation and gave the guest to the memory of the meeting with students the book published in IAPM.