The article defines the main historical and comparative legal aspects of emergence and existence of commercial (economic) courts in European countries, the United States and Ukraine. The article presents the factors of the established tendency to expand the specialization of courts regarding resolution of economic disputes, because the prevalence of the system of specialized legal proceedings in cases of economic nature in the world is conditioned by the needs of economic development and a separate attention of the states to stimulation of operative and professional resolution of certain categories of disputes. It is about economic justice, which can be based on special judicial field of general commercial disputes or relate to one or more categories of economic affairs. The article emphasizes the feasibility of the existence and development of business and commercial courts, whose solutions are more qualitative than ordinary ones. The article remarks the significance of the existence of arbitration courts, the creation of which was due to the intensification of entrepreneurial activity of the non-state sector of the economy, as well as the need to protect the rights and interests of business entities of the public sector during reformation and market transformation. The experience of the functioning of the specialized commercial courts of Europe and the economic courts of Ukraine demonstrates that their existence is completely equivalent to the European experience of the development of judicial system. It is concluded that the elimination of the specialization in reviewing economic cases in Ukraine does not reflect European standards in the judicial process, poses a threat to deprofessionalization of judicial activity and destabilization of legal practice in the economic field

Keywords: economic courts, commercial courts, arbitration courts, specialization in the judicial system, European standards in legal proceedings