THE NOTION OF «PARTY» IN RUSSIAN CRIMINAL PROCEEDINGS

Abstract

The absence of a full-fledged scientific and theoretical study of the criminal procedure notion of «party» in conjunction with the normative and definitional imbalance of this notion in the current sectoral legislation forms polar positions in its interpretation and enforcement in law enforcement practice, which leads to a serious deformation in understanding the mechanisms of organizing criminal proceedings in the Russian Federation. Purpose: to formulate the problem and justify its negative impact on the emerging state law enforcement practice within public law form of the organization of national criminal proceedings. Methods: empirical methods of comparison, description and surveys; theoretical methods of formal and dialectical logic. Results: the study shows that there are serious problems in the regulatory definition of the notion of «party» in the national criminal procedure and in the regulation of its enforcement. The establishment of mandatory elements for ascertaining the presence of the prosecution and defence at a particular stage of criminal proceedings, which consists in the individualisation of the functions performed by a particular party in adversarial process (i.e. with the indispensable participation of an independent party represented by the court), is largely ignored by the legislator in other criminal procedure norms, despite the use of the notion of «party» in them to describe the regulated criminal procedure legal relations.

Keywords

• criminal procedure
• criminal proceedings
• party
• court
• prosecution function
• defence function
• participants in criminal proceedings