Sotskov F.N. On equal rights but not equal opportunities of the parties at the stage of pleadings in the criminal process

Abstract: The article focuses on the problems of legal regulation of the parties’ statuses in the procedural relations. The importance of this topic is conditioned by the legislative rights of the state prosecution and the defense to present their opinions to the court on the stage of pleadings about the application of the criminal law and infliction of punishment. The main conclusion of the article says that the abovementioned legal specificity is supposed to have an ambiguous legal regulation and, consequently, is unequally considered by the court when deciding on the case. This circumstance predetermines the search for the solution of the problem of the parties’ equality during the proceedings and the priority of one of the opinions for the court. The methodology of the research is based on the recent achievements of epistemology. The author uses the theoretical and general philosophical methods (dialectics, the systems method, analysis, synthesis, analogy, deduction, observation, modeling), the traditional legal methods (formal-logical) and the methods applied in special sociological research (the statistical method, expert assessments, etc.). The main conclusion of the article says that there is still much to be done for the provision of law and order in criminal procedure. The main conclusion of the author is the declaration of the necessity of the parties’ procedural equality development in criminal proceedings. The novelty of the research lies in the proposals about the development of procedural criminal legislation in the sphere of the provision of procedural equality of parties in the stage of pleadings.

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