Professional ethics of a jurist as a guarantee of fair justice

The article presents an in-depth study of the role of professional ethics of the lawyer as a fundamental basis for ensuring fair administration of justice in contemporary Ukraine. The relevance of the topic is conditioned by the objective need to strengthen public trust in legal institutions, which directly depends on the unwavering adherence by legal professionals to high moral imperatives. The authors view ethics as an immanent component of legal culture that forms the value framework of the legal profession. The purpose of the article is to examine the general characteristics of professional ethics and the impact of lawyers’ professional ethics on the administration of fair justice, as well as to identify problems of regulatory governance and prospects for the unification of ethical standards in modern legal practice. The research is based on an analysis of the provisions of the Constitution of Ukraine, international standards, in particular the Bangalore Principles, current ethical codes of legal professional communities, and scholarly works of leading researchers. The study demonstrates that professional ethics of the lawyer is grounded in the fundamental principles of honesty, competence, confidentiality, independence, and respect for the court, which together form a stable moral foundation of the profession. The analysis reveals key deficiencies in the current regulation: fragmentation of the conceptual framework, the declarative nature of certain provisions, and a weak link between ethical misconduct and disciplinary sanctions. Using the 2024 version of the Code of Judicial Ethics as an example, the article substantiates the risks of subjectivism arising from the excessive use of evaluative wording and the lack of clear criteria regarding new technological challenges, such as the use of artificial intelligence and communication in social networks. It is established that the absence of a direct correlation between violations and liability in the Code of Judicial Ethics may undermine its practical effectiveness. The article highlights the insufficiency of a purely formal approach to the selection of personnel for legal departments of public authorities and for legal clinics, where the mere possession of a diploma does not guarantee a high level of moral culture. A set of measures is proposed, including terminological unification through the development of a single conceptual and categorical framework, the modernization of Resolution No. 1040 of the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine, and the introduction of framework standards for legal clinics. The implementation of these changes will make ethical codes an effective instrument for strengthening the rule of law and consolidating the principle of the rule of law in Ukraine.