THE CONCEPT OF CRIMINAL PROCESS AND ITS SCIENTIFIC AND PRACTICAL SIGNIFICANCE

Abstract

The article is devoted to the study of problematic issues of the doctrinal definition of the concept of criminal procedure. The author makes a comparative legal analysis of the definitions of «criminal procedure», «criminal proceedings», «criminal proceedings» in legal acts and scientific doctrines of Western countries and Ukraine in the genesis aspect. It is substantiated that the concept of criminal procedure should be used in four senses: as a branch of law, as a branch of science, as a separate type of legal activity, and as an academic discipline. Criminal procedure as an independent branch of public law is a set of legal norms enshrined in the Constitution of Ukraine, international treaties in force and ratified by the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine, the Code of Criminal Procedure and other laws of Ukraine, which regulate legal relations between participants to criminal proceedings. Criminal procedure, as an independent branch of legal science, studies criminal procedural relations arising in connection with criminal proceedings and constitutes a system of concepts, ideas, views, ideas, concepts, doctrines, theories that reveal the essence of criminal procedure, the laws of its emergence, functioning and development. Criminal procedure as an independent type of legal activity of the parties to criminal proceedings (prosecution and defense), the court and other subjects of criminal procedure regulated by criminal procedural law, which consists in clarifying the circumstances of a criminal offense, making procedural decisions and resolving procedural issues related to their implementation in order to resolve a conflict arising from the commission of this offense. The author proves the need for the gradual introduction of the institute of pre-trial advocacy at this stage of criminal proceedings to strengthen the adversarial principles of pre-trial investigation. Criminal procedure as an academic discipline is studied in higher education institutions of legal profile for training lawyers of various specializations. Its subject matter is criminal procedural science, criminal procedural law and the practice of its application. The author substantiates that the doctrinal definition of the concept of criminal procedure in the above four meanings as the initial fundamental doctrinal category of the conceptual apparatus of criminal procedural science is of scientific and practical importance, and also reveals the content of these meanings.