The article substantiates the concept of justice as an independent criterion of the institutional organization of the judicial system under martial law. It is proven that justice in this context has an internal dimension related to the legitimacy and perception of the mechanism for distributing resources and workload by the judicial community, and an external dimension related to equal access to justice, reasonable deadlines and the quality of judicial decisions. The purpose of this article is to justify the need to take into account the actual caseload of judges when assessing the effectiveness of the judicial system and formulating policies for its development. The impact of the disproportion of the judicial workload on the quality of justice, the transformation of the judicial system of Ukraine after 2014 and during the full-scale armed aggression against Ukraine is analyzed. Particular attention is paid to organizational mechanisms for ensuring the efficiency of justice and the institution of judicial secondments. The study conceptualizes justice in two aspects: internal, as a moral category and criterion of institutional design based on fair agreement within the judicial community, and external, as a result of justice and a guarantee of equal access to courts. A system of criteria for a fair organization of the judicial system is proposed, covering the institutional balance of the court network, the proportionality of the judicial workload, the accessibility of justice, the timeliness of case consideration, the quality of judicial decisions, and the legitimacy of workload redistribution mechanisms.

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