The investigating judge" or "the court investigator": what reform do we need?

Nowadays, as during the debate before the adoption of the Code of Criminal Procedure of the Russian Federation, a number of lawyers propose to introduce the judge-arbitrator between the defense and prosecution during the preliminary investigation. It is important for the proposed innovations that the criminal proceedings of any civilized state is the system with its structural interconnected and interdependent elements, mechanisms of checks and balances to ensure qualitative functioning of both separate elements and the system as a whole. It should be stated that there is the «investigating judge» in the Russian criminal process whose set of competences is defined by the legislator correctly in most cases. The major issues is the inadequate quality of the preliminary investigation, in which case the investigating judge can have only indirect influence. If the society wants to have an efficient system of justice, it should be developed and civilized and comply with certain conditions. Only when the members of this society can get effective protection of their rights, when they have the means to produce high-quality legal assistance, when there are mechanisms to defend their rights, including the right to insist on collecting the evidence to protect them even at the stage of preliminary investigation, only then it is possible to speak about the equality of rights of the parties and complete impartiality of the court. It is not a secret that the modern Russia the majority of the population has neither the appropriate level of legal knowledge nor the financial resources to pay for high-quality legal assistance. Moreover, it is necessary to improve the legal culture and professional level of lawyers. There is no doubt that the justice becomes better and fairer with more literate defense attorneys, more professional and morally blameless investigative bodies and more impartial and experienced judges.

Keywords

Authors

References