In practical terms, currently there are no uniform approaches to the procedure for establishing and assessing whether legal interest of individuals is violated when they seek court protection, and this entails different approaches to law application with the aim of exercising the right to its court protection. Under such circumstances, the court’s activities face just criticism because of failure to ensure efficient court protection, primarily due to the lack of motivation and inconsistency in addressing these issues. Therefore, it is quite reasonable that there is the need to explore the content of the concept “interest” as an object of court protection, with a view to forming a unified law application practice.

The purpose of the article is to establish the content of the concept “interest” of individuals and legal entities as an object of court protection in administrative proceedings.

The author analyzes how the term “interest” is used in the Constitution and laws of Ukraine. Based on this analysis, it is concluded that the legislator has not provided the characterization of such concepts as “interest”, “legitimate interest”, “legally protected interest” etc. which would be substantive in terms of law. The author establishes that in some cases, the concept “interest” can be distinguished by subjective or subjectmatter characteristics; and also classifies the types of “interest” by these characteristics. The Constitution of Ukraine does not set out an exhaustive list of interests of citizens, and therefore it can be expanded by the legislator in the laws of Ukraine and by-laws, in particular, by addition those which are protected by law.

Despite the fact that “interest” is one of the categories rather widely used in legislation of Ukraine, given its multi-aspect nature it can be interpreted in the infinite number of ways. In this regard, along with the legal content, the author also analyzes the etymological, general sociological and psychological content of the concept “interest”. Furthermore, the content of the concept “legally protected interest” is established, and the correlation between interest of a community member and local government bodies is determined.

The article ascertains the ways to protect the claimant’s interests in administrative proceedings. An interested person may seek court protection not regarding any interest, but only a legitimate interest, that is, the interest which does not violate the rights, freedoms or interests of other persons. If there is a conflict (competition) of interests of the parties to the dispute, this does not imply the illegitimacy of their interests.

The author suggests that “interest” of individuals and legal entities as an object of court protection in administrative proceedings (part 1, Art. 2 of the Code of Administrative Proceedings of Ukraine) should be understood as a conscious and manifested intent to use a specific tangible and/or intangible benefit; a simple legitimate permission which is conditioned by the general content of the objective and not directly mediated in the subjective law, as an independent object of court protection and other legal protection means with the aim of meeting individual and collective needs which are not inconsistent with the Constitution and laws of Ukraine, public interests, justice, good faith, reasonableness and other general principles of law.

The author establishes the signs which “interest” should comply as an object of court protection in administrative proceedings, namely: conscious and manifested, in particular, in the statement of claim, intent; interest should be logically and semantically connected with subjective rights; it is not directly mediated by subjective rights, i.e. it extends beyond their limits; it does not contradict the Constitution and laws of Ukraine, public interests, justice, good faith, reasonableness and other general principles of law which means that it is consistent with the sign of “legitimacy”; the purpose of court protection of interest is to satisfy particularly the individual needs; if a person’s interest is violated, this person can sustain damage.

The author comes to the conclusion that due to the lack of legal regulation of a certain interest of the claimant, or due to the limits of respondent’s behavior established by provisions of law, the fact that a claimant has interest should be established on a casebycase basis, unless otherwise expressly provided by law (as, for example, in case of clarification of electoral lists).