History of the Faculty

A sample of the synthesis and bridge of legal cultures of the nations of the West and the East

This is how Manfred Rebinder, a professor at the University of Zurich (Switzerland), the most prominent researcher of the creative heritage of the world’s luminary of legal thought Eugen Ehrlich, called the Faculty of Law of Yuriy Fedkovych Chernivtsi National University during his first visit to the University of Chernivtsi in August 1999.

The Austrian period of the Faculty’s development

In 1875, the Franz Josef Imperial University was opened in Chernivtsi, consisting of three faculties: Law, Philosophy, and Theology. The university was established to implement the multicultural policy pursued by Austria-Hungary (which included Bukovyna as one of its provinces) and to carry out the cultural mission of the state’s titular nation, the Austrians, in Bukovyna. It was the fifth university to be founded on Ukrainian lands, after Lviv (1661), Kharkiv (1805), Kyiv (1835), and Odesa (1865) universities. The principle of ‘viribus unitis’ (‘by joint efforts’) was cultivated in the then Austria-Hungary, which played a crucial role in the foundation and development of Chernivtsi University, as it was the result of a combination of efforts of the state and the local community. The first rector of Chernivtsi University was a lawyer, Kostiantyn Tomashchuk. Currently, the university led by professor Ruslan Biloskurskyi.

Since its foundation, the Faculty of Law of the Chernivtsi University has been recognisable among other law faculties of Austro-Hungarian universities by the outstanding personalities of its teachers and graduates. The first dean of the Faculty of Law of Chernivtsi University was a well-known Austrian legal scholar of that time, Friedrich von Libloy. In 1878-1879 and 1890-1891 he was elected as the rector of the university. In the initial period of the faculty’s formation, such famous scientists and teachers as Konstiantyn Tomaschuk, Karl Hiller, Friedrich Klanwechter, Ernest Gruza, Arthur Skedl, Franz Haucke, Alfred Galban, Karl Adler, and Heinrich Singer worked alongside him. A common feature of all of them was that they were distinguished by their pronounced freedom of thought, independence of opinion, and strong civic position, which were not always tolerated by the authorities. This was the beginning of a spontaneous experiment to concentrate science and free thinking in one place at the same time on the political periphery of the state. Yeast was thrown into an oak barrel of young wine. And the natural result was not long in coming.

It was brought by the world-famous scientists and thinkers Eugen Ehrlich, Hans Gross and Joseph Schumpeter, who worked at the faculty at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Eugen Ehrlich was the most prominent legal scholar at the Faculty of Law of the Chernivtsi University.

Eugen Ehrlich had been working at the University of Chernivtsi for almost a quarter of his life, from 1896 to 1918 as a professor of Roman law, led a seminar on living law, and was elected as dean of the law faculty (1901) and rector of the university (1906). Eugen Ehrlich is best known for his famous work ‘The Foundations of the Sociology of Law’, published for the first time in 1913. Thanks to this book, Eugen Ehrlich was recognized as the founder of the sociological doctrine of law, which became particularly widespread in the world in the second half of the twentieth century. Vyacheslav Bihun, one of the researchers of Eugene Ehrlich’s creative heritage, once summarised: ‘…it was the name of Ehrlich that was long associated with the University of Chernivtsi in Europe…’. Today, the Faculty of Law still has Eugen Ehrlich’s classroom, where he used to give lectures.

Two years after Eugen Ehrlich joined the Faculty of Law, its cohort of teachers was joined by Hans Gross, who was already well-known in Austria-Hungary. He became the founder of criminalistics, prepared and published the famous ‘Handbook for Judicial Investigators as a System of Criminalistics’ and ‘Criminal Psychology’, created the world’s first Museum of Criminalistics, and founded the journal ‘Archive of Criminal Anthropology and Criminalistics’ (today it is called ‘Archive of Criminology’). From 1898 to 1902, Hans Gross taught courses in criminal procedure, substantive criminal law and penitentiary law at the University of Chernivtsi, and conducted seminars on criminal law. Hans Gross taught his courses in the light of the classical school of criminal law, but in his writings he adhered to the views of the so-called school of young German criminalists and the realist-psychological trend he founded. Today, the Hans Gross Auditorium and the Hans Gross Criminalistics Laboratory continue to operate at the Faculty of Law.

The world-famous scientist, one of the most respected scientific opponents of Karl Marx, Joseph Schumpeter, increased the recognition and fame of the Faculty of Law of the Chernivtsi University. From 1909 to 1912, he taught courses in financial law to students of the Faculty’s State Law Department, which in its existing version was mainly limited to budget law, public banking law and tax law. Joseph Schumpeter formulated the most widespread scientific paradigm of tax state research throughout the twentieth century: ‘Since the state and the tax have so much in common with each other, it is natural to try to understand the essence of the state from this point of view’. Thanks to it, he has become a recognised guru among researchers of the tax state. Having joined the faculty at the age of twenty-six, which was a very exciting age for a scholar, Joseph Schumpeter, together with Eugen Ehrlich, organised a permanent theoretical seminar that became known in many law schools of Europe at that time. In his later years, during his work as a professor at Harvard University in the United States, Joseph Schumpeter described his creative communication with Eugen Ehrlich at the Chernivtsi University as ‘a fairy tale from a thousand and one nights’. Today, the Joseph Schumpeter Auditorium continues to function at the faculty.

By the way, a century after Joseph Schumpeter, the tradition of fundamental study and teaching of tax law at the faculty was revived, but with the opposite worldview and methodological approaches to Schumpeter’s. This was done by Ruslana Havryliuk, who was the first in the science of financial law to substantiate the historical limitations of the Schumpeterian paradigm of understanding the tax state. She proved the necessity of applying an anthroposociocultural approach and needs-based legal understanding to the understanding of the nature of tax law and the tax state, and for the first time in science developed the anthroposociocultural concept of tax law and the tax state. This is so far the most significant scientific innovation among the creative achievements of the scholars of the revived Faculty. The revived scientific tradition of research of tax law and the tax state, as well as innovative teaching of these subjects to students, has taken root at the Faculty and has been widely recognised by other law schools. This is reflected, in particular, in the fact that since 2012, the Department of Public Law, together with the Students’ League of the Ukrainian Lawyers Association, has been holding an annual All-Ukrainian Financial Law School for students, which has become popular among Ukrainian law students.

The Romanian period

The Romanian period of activity of the Faculty of Law of Chernivtsi University was in 1918-1940. At that time, the ideology and philosophy of legal education and science, as well as the role of the individual in them, changed radically. The free thinking and freedom, the spirit of creativity and even healthy rivalry that prevailed among the faculty and students of the Faculty of Law of Chernivtsi University during the Austrian period of its development, which brought it brilliant results, were replaced by strict formal discipline in the educational process, frank etatism in science, and apologetics of the Romanian state, which developed into a fascist dictatorship. That is why there were incomparably fewer prominent figures at this time of the faculty’s activity compared to the previous period of its development. The latter include professors Gheorghe Dregenescu and Constantin Isopescu-Grecul.

Almost simultaneously with the arrival of the USSR in Northern Bukovyna in 1940, the Faculty of Law at Chernivtsi University was closed.

The Faculty of Law of Yuriy Fedkovych Chernivtsi National University was revived on May 1st, 1991, a few months before Ukraine became a sovereign state. This became a symbolic anthroposociocultural code of the faculty – to be ahead of the times. The idea of reviving the Faculty of Law at Yuriy Fedkovych Chernivtsi National University belongs to its 1926 graduate Leon Vovk, who, at a respectable age (over 90 years old), was still working as the head of the legal department at one of the major industrial concerns in Vancouver (Canada). He told this story to Petro Patsurkivskyi when, in the autumn of 1990, he was visiting the University of Saskatchewan (Canada) as part of a delegation of teachers and students from Yuriy Fedkovych Chernivtsi National University on a research internship. By the way, ironically, it was Petro Patsurkivskyi, who later became a Doctor of Law, Professor, Honoured Lawyer of Ukraine, who was the main designer and constructor of this idea and at the same time its executor – in 1991 he became the Dean of the University’s Faculty of Law.

The author of the formula for the revival of the Faculty of Law belongs to the then Dean of the Faculty of Law of Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv, Professor Vladlen Honcharenko: the Faculty of Law was re-established at Yuriy Fedkovych Chernivtsi National University in the legal form of a branch of the Faculty of Law of Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv with dual subordination to the rectors of both universities on the basis of consensus management.

This formula of revival made it possible from the very first year of the branch’s existence to teach its students by the best professors and associate professors of the Faculty of Law of Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv, V. Koretsky Institute of State and Law of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine and Ivan Franko National University of Lviv: Vasyl Muntyan, Mykola Kozyubra, Oleksandr Shevchenko, Lidiya Voronova, Volodymyr Shapoval, Leonid Koval, Mykhailo Mykheienko, Opanas Pidopryhora, Halyna Balyuk, Mykhailo Shtefan, Vitaliy Marchuk, Viktor Melashchenko, Volodymyr Kotyuk, Mykhailo Nelip, Serhii Shapchenko, Nadiia Pryshva, Olena Orliuk, Yaroslava Bezuhla, Valerian Moldovan, Yaroslavna Shevchenko, Vadym Averyanov, Natalia Vorotina, Zoryslava Romovska, Volodymyr Kosak and others.

For their special contribution to the revival and further development of the Faculty of Law of Yuriy Fedkovych Chernivtsi National University, the Academic Council of the University awarded the title of Honorary Doctor of the University to Rector Viktor Skopenko (1995) and Professor Volodymyr Shapoval (2007), and Honorary Professor of the University to Dean of the Faculty of Law Vladlen Honcharenko (1995) and Professor Lidiya Voronova (2000) – all from Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv.

The yeast for brains has done its job again, just as it did at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, have done their job perfectly: Since the revival of the Faculty of Law at Yuriy Fedkovych Chernivtsi National University, its staff and students have defended more than 30 doctoral theses (Petro Patsurkivskyi, Anton Kozlovskyi, Aurel Georgica, Mykola Yakymchuk, Mykhailo Nikiforak, Mykola Bodnaruk, Victoria Sydor, Tamara Latkovska, Nataliia Yakymchuk, Iryna Slovska, Vitalii Marchak, Oksana Shcherbaniuk, Serhii Melenko, Liubov Zamorska, Ruslana Havryliuk, Andrii Butyrskyi, Serhii Nezhurbida, Jan Bernaziuk, Viacheslav Khokhulyak, Kostiantyn Chernovskyi, Yuliia Tsurkan-Seyfulina, Nina Hetmantseva, Marian Savchyshyn, Vasyl Yurchyshyn, Liudmyla Kozlovska, Vitalii Vdovichen, Tetiana Pohorodna, Nataliia Guralenko, Pavlo Petrenko, Liudmyla Vakariuk, Yurii Kliuchkovskyi, Halyna Zharovska) and more than 200 PhD theses, many dozens of scientific monographs have been published, and real scientific discoveries have been made.

Thanks to the joint efforts of all those involved in its creation, the faculty has a powerful, original and highly productive, creative research and teaching team, united into six departments: the Department of Human Rights (Headed by PhD in Law, Associate Professor Serhii Savchuk), the Department of Public Law (Headed by Doctor of Law, Associate Professor Ruslana Havryliuk. By the way, the department was originally established in 1992 as the Department of Constitutional Law, headed by a well-known Ukrainian constitutional scholar, Professor Leonid Yuzkov. Shortly afterwards, he was elected as a judge of the first composition of the Constitutional Court of Ukraine and Chairman of the Constitutional Court of Ukraine. He became one of the authors of the current Constitution of Ukraine.), the Department of Private Law (Head of the Department, Doctor of Law, Professor Nina Hetmantseva), the Department of Procedural Law (Head of the Department, Doctor of Law, Associate Professor Oksana Shcherbaniuk), the Department of European Law and Comparative Jurisprudence (Head of the Department, Doctor of Law, Professor Serhii Melenko), the Department of Criminal Law (Head of the Department, Doctor of Law, Associate Professor Halyna Zharovska). All six departments together currently employ 14 Doctors of Law, professors and more than 70 PhDs, associate professors.

Nowadays, the Faculty of Law of Yuriy Fedkovych Chernivtsi National University has once again emerged as a constellation of bright personalities, teachers and scientists. It is again recognisable in Ukraine and abroad by the names of its teachers and graduates. It has acquired new traditions of its own in the training of legal professionals. As tools of in-depth practical training of students at the faculty, a legal clinic and educational and scientific laboratories have been created and are successfully functioning: As tools for in-depth practical training of students, the faculty has created and successfully operates a legal clinic and educational and scientific laboratories: a) of mediation, negotiations and arbitration; b) Hans Gross forensic laboratory; c) of European law; d) of human rights; e) of intellectual property law; f) Center for German law.

In 2014, the Academic Council and administration of the Faculty were the second in Ukraine, after the Faculty of Law of Ivan Franko National University of Lviv, to initiate the first international audit of the quality of legal training at the Faculty. This audit was conducted in March-May 2015 with the organizational and financial support of the USAID Fair Justice Program. Its materials were fully published on the Faculty’s website and formed the basis for a fundamental improvement in the quality of legal education at the Faculty, the implementation of the academic integrity policy, which was actively supported by the entire academic community of the Faculty.

In 2015, the academic community of the Faculty was one of the first in Ukraine to initiate the creation of the ‘Moral and Ethical Minimum for Teachers, Students, Staff and Administration of the Faculty of Law of Yuriy Fedkovych Chernivtsi National University’. To this purpose, with the assistance of the USAID Fair Justice Program and Professor Thomas H. Speedy Rice of the Washington and Lee University School of Law (Lexington, Virginia, USA), it established fruitful cooperation with this faculty, which continues to this day.

An important tool for improving the quality of lawyers’ training at the Faculty was the systematic qualification improvement of the Faculty’s academic staff at law schools of European universities. During 2016-2019, fourteen academic staff members of the Faculty took qualification upgrading courses at the Faculty of Law of the University of Wismar (Germany), four – at the Faculty of Law of the Catholic University of Lublin (Poland), two – at the Faculty of Law of the University of Rzeszow (Poland), one – at the Faculty of Law of the University of Szczecin (Poland), two – at the Faculty of Law of Masaryk University in Brno (Czech Republic), one (for the whole academic year) – at the Faculty of Law of Lecce (Italy) and the Faculty of Law of Valencia (Spain), one – at the Faculty of Law of the University of Iași (Romania). In autumn 2019, four more academic staff members of the Faculty are scheduled to undergo qualification upgrading at the Faculty of Law of Vilnius National University (Lithuania).

Since 2016, an annual exchange of academic staff of the Faculty within the framework of the Erasmus+ Program with their colleagues from partner universities in Eastern and Central Europe has been actively practiced – 6-7 people per year from each side. The most fruitful international cooperation of the Faculty has developed with the law faculties of the University of Wismar (Germany), the University of Applied Sciences of Trier (Germany), the Wiesbaden Institute of Law and Economics (Germany), the Wiesbaden Business School (Germany), the University of Graz (Austria), the University of Suceava (Romania), and the Catholic University of Lublin (Poland).

In February-May 2019, the departments of European Law and Comparative Law, Procedural Law and Public Law, together with colleagues from the law faculties of the Wiesbaden Institute of Law and Economics (Germany) (which also became the main financial sponsor of this programme), the University of Applied Sciences of Trier (Germany), the University of Graz (Austria) and the Centre for Eastern European Law of the University of Graz (Austria). Trier (Germany), the University of Graz (Austria) and the Centre for East European Law of the University of Graz organised the first international certificate programme ‘European Law’ for interested teachers and students of the Faculty of Law of our University and legal practitioners. The majority of the students in this programme were the most creative students of the faculty who are fluent in English. The programme’s lecturers from the European partners were Michael Hackenberg, Professor of the Faculty of Law at the University of Applied Sciences of Trier (Germany); Rainer Hartmann and Rainer Wedde, Professors at the Wiesbaden Institute of Law and Economics (Germany); and Aiste Mikonite, Doctor of Law from the Karl and Franz University of Graz. From the side of the Faculty of Law of the Yuriy Fedkovych Chernivtsi National University, the teachers of the certificate programme are: Professors Petro Patsurkivskyi and Serhii Melenko; Doctors of Law, Heads of Departments Ruslana Havryliuk and Oksana Shcherbaniuk; Doctor of Law, Judge of the Commercial Court of Chernivtsi Region Andrii Butyrskyi. At the end of the programme, both the participants and the teachers stated with one voice that the programme had exceeded their initial expectations and achieved its goals.  A total of 30 people successfully passed the final exam.

This active international cooperation was initiated by the Department of Constitutional, Administrative and Financial Law, which initiated and organised a number of international scientific conferences that had a great positive international response and brought together representatives of more than ten countries. These are the following conferences: ‘Problems of Financial Law’ in 1996; “Financial and Legal Doctrine of the Post-Soviet State” in 2003; ‘Legislative Definition: Logical and Gnosiological, Political and Legal, Moral and Psychological and Practical Problems’ in 2006; ‘Specification of legislation as a technical and legal means of rule-making, interpretation and law enforcement practice’ in 2007; ‘Law-making mistakes: concept, types, practice and technique of elimination in post-Soviet states’ in 2008 and a number of other international scientific conferences.

The Departments of European Law and Comparative Law and the Department of Public Law, together with the Faculty of Law of the University of Suceava, launched the annual International Scientific Conferences ‘Ethical and Social Dimensions in Public Administration and Law’ (the conferences were held in April 2017, 2018 and 2019). They have found active support among many law schools not only in Ukraine and Romania, but also in Poland, Slovakia, Germany, Italy, Moldova and other countries.

The Department of Procedural Law, together with partners from the above-mentioned law schools of Germany and Austria, launched the annual autumn International Scientific Conference ‘Modern Challenges and Current Issues of Judicial Reform in Ukraine’ (the conferences were held in October 2017 and 2018 and are scheduled for October 2019). This conference also received wide support from experts in Ukraine and abroad.

In July 2019, the Department of Procedural Law, together with the European Union Project ‘Pravo-Justice’, held the Summer Legal School-2019 ‘Ukraine’s Path to the European Union’, in which, following the results of the preliminary competitive selection, law students from Ivano-Frankivsk, Kyiv, Lviv, Kharkiv and Chernivtsi took the most active part. The school was conducted primarily in English.

The systematic and purposeful work of the entire academic community of the Faculty to improve the quality of legal training has already brought significant achievements. Among them, the key is the creation of an innovative scientific and educational environment for teachers and students at the faculty, which encourages creativity and helps it in every way. In particular, the legal researches these Faculty’s teachers and PhD students appeared in publications indexed in the Scopus and Web of Science databases: Petro Patsurkivskyi, Ruslana Havryliuk, Dmytro Kostia, Vitalii Vdovichen, Andrii Khudyk, and Viktoriia Rarytska. They are all united by the Department of Public Law.

Another breakthrough achievement of the Department of Public Law of the Faculty of Law became known in late summer 2018, when six winning projects of the EU Erasmus+ Higher Education Capacity Building Program from Ukraine were officially announced. Yuriy Fedkovych Chernivtsi National University is represented in the project Mediation: training and society transformation / MEDIATS by the Department of Public Law, represented by the following members: Ruslana Havryliuk, Head of the Department, Project Team Leader, Petro Patsurkivskyi, Dean of the Faculty of Law (1991-2021), Professor of the Department, Dmytro Kostia, Associate Professor of the Department, Pavlo Bartusiak, Assistant Professor of the Department, Liudmyla Kostia, Heorhii Moisei, and Illia Yuriichuk, PhD students of the Department.

The project partners are: Netherlands Business Academy (Breda, the Netherlands); University of San Antonio (Murcia, Spain); Business School of Turiba University (Riga, Latvia); KROK University (Kyiv, Ukraine); V. N. Karazin Kharkiv National University (Kharkiv, Ukraine); Yuriy Fedkovych Chernivtsi National University (Chernivtsi, Ukraine); Khazar University (Baku, Azerbaijan); Ganja State University (Ganja, Azerbaijan); Ilia State University (Tbilisi, Georgia); S. Rustaveli State University (Batumi, Georgia); Consulting company HULTGREN (Berlin, Germany).

The project aims to create opportunities for universities to become one of the key players in promoting the values of mediation in Azerbaijan, Georgia and Ukraine in order to strengthen democracy and accelerate constructive dispute resolution by adopting the best European mediation practices. To achieve the above goals, the Project teams study best practices in EU countries, select and train staff, and develop and implement Master’s degree programs in mediation for students.

In the summer of 2018, for the first time in Ukraine, the Department of Public Law of the University’s Faculty of Law successfully enrolled applicants for the Master’s degree program in Professional Mediation. The quality of training in this program and the competences of students are carefully assessed by national and European experts, and practical activities are organized in partner countries and in the EU in order to guarantee high-quality training of mediators. Timeframe of the project implementation: 15.11.2018 – 14.11.2021.

The Educational and Scientific Laboratory of Mediation, Negotiation and Arbitration of the Department of Public Law of the Faculty was the first in Ukraine to develop and successfully implement the “Professional Mediator” certificate program in 2018, and held two full graduations of this program. This program is one of the most fundamental training programs for professional mediators in Ukraine, providing 324 hours of compulsory classroom training, mostly practical, and a serious final exam, which is taken by external examiners who have European certificates of professional mediators and extensive experience in conducting mediation procedures. Perhaps this can explain the distinguished composition of the participants of both editions of this certificate program, including not only residents of the Chernivtsi region or neighbouring Khmelnytskyi and Ivano-Frankivsk regions, but also the city of Kyiv.

In 2018, the team of master’s students specializing in ‘Prosecution’ from the Department of Criminal Law was among the top ten winning teams in the competition ‘Ten Steps of a Prosecutor to Overcome Corruption’, organized by the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine, the Prosecutor General’s Office of Ukraine and the EU Advisory Mission of Ukraine.

In 2018, Vitalii Yaremchuk, a bachelor’s and master’s graduate of the Faculty and currently a PhD student at the Department of European Law and Comparative Law (supervised by Professor Serhii Melenko), became one of two winners of the traditional “Youth Delegate from Ukraine to the United Nations” competition. The Department of European Law and Comparative Law, together with its colleagues from the University of Suceava (Romania), has launched a double degree programme for Masters of International Law. It has also established a business partnership with the Faculty of Law in Wismar (Germany), as a result of which some international students are doing one of their educational internships there.

An important integral achievement of the entire academic community of the Faculty was the high results of the Faculty’s bachelor’s graduates, demonstrated by them in 2017 and 2018 during open national examinations for master’s degree on the basis of the External Independent Testing. While in 2017 the Faculty was ranked among the top ten law schools in Ukraine, in 2018 it was already among the top ten law schools in Ukraine in terms of the quality of professional training of lawyers. This year, teams from 65 universities are taking part in the tournament. They represent 37 countries. Ukraine is represented only by the team of our faculty.

A real triumph of the Faculty was the entry of our student teams in 2017, 2018 and 2019 into the semi-finals of the world’s most prestigious competition for law students, the Nelson Mandela Human Rights Moot Court, which is traditionally held in Geneva (Switzerland) in the summer. The current fourth-year student Roman Tokaryk has been a member of these teams three times. In 2019, Arina Lupu and Yulia Stratoy won this right together with him.

Every year, students of the Faculty of Law become winners in individual and team competitions at the All-Ukrainian Olympiads in Law and National Competitions of Student Research Papers in Law. In 2018, the team consisting of Olena Shcherbakova and Maria Ksionzhek (Master’s students of the Department of Public Law, specialising in Mediation, who were trained for the competition by the Head of the Department Ruslana Havryliuk and Associate Professor Dmytro Kostia) won the second team place at the All-Ukrainian Olympiad in Law, and Maria Ksionzhek also won the second place in the individual competition. The second place in the National Student Research Paper Competition in 2018 was won by student Anna Myroniuk (supervised by Associate Professor of the Department of Public Law Ihor Kovbas).

The most concentrated result of the innovative development of the Faculty of Law of Yuriy Fedkovych Chernivtsi National University was its transformation from a leading regional law school to one of the leading law schools of Ukraine.

In February-June 2019, the second international audit of the quality of legal education at the University’s Faculty of Law was conducted for the first time in Ukraine on the initiative of the Academic Council and the Faculty Administration. Organisational and financial support for its implementation was provided by the EU Pravo Justice Program. The faculty has not yet received the final official report on the results of this audit.

For more than ten years, the Faculty of Law of the Yuriy Fedkovych National University of Chernivtsi and the Levitt Institute (USA) have been cooperating on the framework of The BUILD Initiative project, in which up to 50 senior students from the Faculty participate annually on a voluntary basis. During the autumn and spring semesters, in addition to their personal study programmes, they attend special courses taught by professors from US universities and prominent American judges and lawyers, and in the summer they go on internships at various US legal institutions.

In terms of generalized indicators, according to the graduate database, 95 per cent of master’s degree graduates and almost 90 per cent of specialist degree graduates are employed in Ukraine in the professional field acquired at the Faculty of Law. In a market society, this is a worthy indicator of their competitiveness in the labour market due to proper professional training. Some of the best-trained and fluent English-speaking graduates of the faculty have found jobs in other European countries and in the United States.

As of the beginning of 2019, graduates of the Faculty of Law held more than 80% of full-time positions in the Chernivtsi Region Prosecutor’s Offices, almost 80% of full-time positions in the courts, the Advocacy and Notary’s Offices of the Chernivtsi Region, accounted for more than half of the staff of the Security Service of Ukraine and the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine in the Chernivtsi Region, and more than 300 people work as legal experts in the banking system of Ukraine.

Since its revival, the Law School has trained over 2000 Masters of Law and about 4500 specialised lawyers. The most prominent among them are the statesman Arsenii Yatseniuk, who was elected as the Chairman of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine, Prime Minister of Ukraine and Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine, Minister of the Ministry of Justice of Ukraine Pavlo Petrenko, People’s Deputies of Ukraine Yuriy Kliuchkovskiy, Heorhiy Manchulenko, Valeriy Kelestyn, Maksym Burbak, Oksana Prodan, Andriy Ivanchuk, Valeriy Bozhyk, Maksym Zaremskiy, Judges of the Supreme Court of Ukraine Yan Bernazyuk and Vyacheslav Khokhulyak, Judge of the Appeals Chamber of the High Anti-Corruption Court of Ukraine Serhii Bodnar, Deputy Chairman of the Chernivtsi Court of Appeal Vitaliy Marchak, Chairman of the Management Board of Oschadbank of Ukraine Andriy Pyshnyi, Military Prosecutor of Ukraine Anatoliy Matios, Deputy Head of the Security Service of Ukraine Oleksandr Karpenko, graduates of the Faculty who have made a particularly successful career abroad – Viktor Hohots, Kostiantyn Konishchev, Dmytro Hladkov, Rostyslav Lisovyi, Marian Savchyshyn and many others whose paths to independent professional life began at the Faculty of Law of Yuriy Fedkovych Chernivtsi National University.

The tradition of the faculty community’s active involvement in the practical implementation of public functions was established by the first rector of the University of Chernivtsi, lawyer Kostiantyn Tomashchuk, who was elected to the State Council (Parliament) of Austria-Hungary five times in a row.

The young legal elite of Ukraine is growing, gaining the necessary knowledge, practical skills and abilities in the right conditions that meet the latest European standards of legal education. Soon there will be phenomena like Eugen Ehrlich, Hans Gross, Joseph Schumpeter, and even more spectacular ones. Personalities give rise to personalities. This has been an axiom since the Personal Revolution, which first took place in ancient Greece in the era of Socrates and was once again confirmed by the Revolution of Dignity in 2013-2014 in Ukraine.

The patience and efforts of the academic staff of the Faculty and time do their job.