Access to justice and problems of its restriction in criminal procedure

Abstract

This article analyzes the controversies in definition of the concepts “right of access”, “access to justice”, “court accessibility”, "access to justice", as well as the problem of restriction of access to justice in criminal procedure. Detailed analysis is conducted on the existing approaches towards definition of the aforementioned concepts. The subject of this research is the norms of Russian and foreign legislation that regulate the right to access to justice in criminal procedure. It is demonstrated that the concept of “accessibility of justice” reflects an exogenous objective factor unrelated to the system of criminal justice, while “access to justice” in criminal procedure should be considered an indigenous objective factor, associated with the structure of criminal procedure, substantiated by its public-legal nature. The authors conduct the analysis of complaints regarding the restriction of right to access justice, which were received by the Ombudsman for Human Rights in the Russian Federation. The conclusion is formulated on the need for creating a novel algorithm (legislative model) of the initial stage of criminal procedure that ensures access to justice without dismantling the very foundation of criminal procedure, while maintaining an optimal ratio between public and dispositive beginnings of criminal procedure.