On dialectical and sophistic approaches in the criminal procedure (based on Hegel's Science of Logic)

In the article the author proceeds from the need to clearly distinguish two types of criminal procedure: objective-true (research), which takes into account objective dialectical patterns, and adversarial (win-or-lose), which does not take into account dialectics and is prone to sophistry, for which "the whole point is not in the truth, but in victory alone" in the dispute between the parties, in the ability to look for different reasons (arguments, grounds) to convince the court of its own right. It is shown that sophistry and sophistic relativism are in demand in our time. The predisposition of the current adversarial RF Code of Criminal Procedure to sophistry is indicated by the theoretical position of well-known scholars, representatives of the Nizhny Novgorod school of processualists, A.S. Alexandrov and V.V. Terekhin. They accurately characterise the adversarial winning essence of the modern Russian criminal procedure. This position quite satisfies the modern legislator - the creator of the current adversarial Criminal Procedure Code of the Russian Federation. Since the nature of the criminal procedure, in the author's opinion, is still sophistic, dialectics is not accepted in it. However, the criminal procedure should not be based on the principles of relativism, but should be guided by the principle of an objective-true, authentic distinction of truth from lies, truth from error, the really guilty from the truly innocent, probability from reliability, presumption of innocence from presumption of culpability, etc. Individual rights in the criminal procedure should not become hostages to sophistic relativism. The non-recognition of materialistic dialectics does not and can not abolish the actions of objective dialectical regularities, the existence of which is confirmed by the world around us and practice. Hence, the objective-true form of the criminal procedure, in the author's opinion, is a more perfect, more fair type of criminal procedure than the adversarial criminal procedure in which the triumph belongs to the strong, not to the right.

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