CONSTITUTIONAL GUARANTEES FOR THE PROTECTION OF HUMAN RIGHTS AND FREEDOMS IN UKRAINE: ECONOMIC AND LEGAL ASPECT

Abstract

The subject of the study is the constitutional guarantees of human rights and freedoms in Ukraine viewed through an economic and legal lens, with a focus on how normative standards, institutions, procedures, and public finance jointly determine the real level of rights protection under ordinary conditions, martial law, and recovery. The paper examines why constitutional guarantees should be treated as an operating governance system that shapes predictability of state behaviour, integrity of regulatory decision-making, investment and labour incentives, and the sustainability of social protection, rather than as a declarative catalogue of rights. Special attention is paid to the role of constitutional review and judicial control in constraining administrative discretion, to due process as an economic safeguard against arbitrariness, and to budget and tax governance as a resource infrastructure enabling positive obligations. The paper also addresses the impact of European human-rights standards, including the Convention system and ECtHR case-law, on proportionality, non-discrimination, protection of property, and effective remedies, particularly in crisis regulation and in contexts where temporary measures tend to become permanent. Methodology. The research is based on a combination of formal-legal, systemic, comparative-legal, and institutional approaches. It integrates doctrinal analysis of constitutional provisions and related legislation with an examination of European standards (rule of law, proportionality, fair balance, and non-discrimination) and a review of judicial practice relevant to economic rights, property interference, and access to justice. Policy analysis is applied to clarify how constitutional requirements are translated into administrative procedures, regulatory instruments, and budget programs, and to identify interface risks that typically arise between constitutional standards and implementation capacity during resource scarcity and wartime governance. The aim of the work is to substantiate an analytically coherent model of constitutional guarantees for Ukraine that explains their economic significance, identifies vulnerabilities in the strategy–delivery chain of rights protection, and formulates practical proposals for strengthening controllability, transparency, and accountability of state interference while preserving the enforceability of social rights under fiscal constraints. The results of the study show that that the effectiveness of constitutional guarantees depends less on the density of constitutional declarations and more on the coherence of four interconnected layers: normative limits on interference, institutional checks (constitutional jurisdiction, ordinary courts, ombudsman and integrity bodies), procedural discipline (reasoned decisions, the right to be heard, access to information, and reviewability), and financial governance (budget transparency, prioritization rules, and enforceable compensation mechanisms). The paper demonstrates that due process reduces transaction costs and arbitrariness risks in economically significant decisions, while judicial control operationalizes proportionality and fair-balance tests in concrete disputes. For Ukraine, the critical governance risk is the normalization of emergency practices: under martial law, expanded regulatory tools and accelerated decision-making can weaken legal certainty unless supported by time-bounded measures, public criteria, periodic review, and effective remedies. The study proposes a strengthening roadmap centred on standardizing decision-making procedures for high-impact administrative acts, embedding proportionality and evidence standards in regulatory templates, reinforcing access to justice and enforcement capacity, institutionalizing budget openness for rights-related programs, and ensuring practicable compensation for unlawful interference and emergency-related property measures. Conclusion. Sustainable constitutional guarantees require shifting from formal recognition of rights toward a managed, auditable governance cycle in which legal standards, institutions, procedures, and public finance operate as a single system of constraints and remedies. For Ukraine, the most feasible path is not expanding declarations, but reproducing functional safeguards: predictable and reviewable procedures, integrity-by-design controls, stable proportionality tests in adjudication, and budget transparency that makes social rights administrable during war and recovery, thereby strengthening trust and reducing economic uncertainty associated with state intervention.