The legal nature of judicial reconciliation

Abstract

Introduction. The article examines the legal nature of judicial reconciliation with the participation of a judicial conciliator (hereinafter referred to as judicial reconciliation), and highlights the debatable nature of the topic under consideration. The authors state that it is necessary to disclose the legal nature of judicial reconciliation in order to clarify its place in the legal system of Russia and to identify functional links with other related institutions of substantive and procedural law. Problem statement. The article argues that the success of the introduction of the institution of judicial reconciliation into legal practice depends on the disclosure of its legal nature in the system of human rights tools and mechanisms. At the same time, the ambiguity of the term of “legal nature” itself contributes to uncertainty in this matter. It is proved that the content of the term of “legal nature” includes various signs of the phenomenon, which must be consistently disclosed in the process of cognition. The authors emphasize that the legal nature of judicial reconciliation is complex, dualistic. This is expressed in a combination of judicial (jurisdictional) and extra-judicial (non-jurisdictional, alternative) characteristics, which is clearly revealed in the dualism of the legal status of the judicial conciliator. Theoretical and empirical analysis. The analysis of the legislation shows that, on the one hand, a judicial conciliator is a former judge who has extensive practical experience in legal proceedings and a vision of the prospects for resolving the case; on the other hand, the judicial conciliator, while remaining part of the judicial system, is free from rigid conservativecorporatist judicial discipline when conducting judicial reconciliation and can, without excessive formalism and substantive resolution of the case, offer the parties mutually benefi cial reconciliation conditions, under which the legal confl ict will be resolved. Results. The authors conclude that the duality of the legal nature of judicial reconciliation is due to the convergence processes that take place in the Russian law and trends associated with the change in the confi guration of the judiciary.

Keywords

• conciliation procedures
• judicial reconciliation
• judge-conciliator
• jurisdiction
• non-jurisdictional process
• legal proceedings
• legal nature