Court impartiality in RF criminal procedure: undeserved neglect

This paper argues the importance of the address of the Russian criminal procedure science and lawmakers to the problems of ensuring impartiality of the court. The causes of difficulties in the implementation of this principle in the criminal justice of Russia are analyzed. Among them is underestimation of impartiality of the court by legislators and practitioners, as well as the lack of attention to it by experts in Russian criminal procedure. The author analyzes the gaps of the Russian legislation, the lack of sufficient information about the need to ensure the impartiality of the court in it; gives data on the history of references to it in the Russian legislation, and the traditional interpretation of the content of impartiality in the Russian legal doctrine. Next, the paper demonstrates the need for a clear definition of the content and the starting point of the impartiality of judges in the Russian criminal procedure, the importance of establishing a system of guarantees of its implementation in criminal justice, which, as the author shows, should be done with the support of the legal philosophy of the European Court of Human Rights. By analyzing the legal position of the ECHR on issues of impartiality, the author argues the independent nature of impartiality of the court, its "irreduceability" to the independence of the court or the adversariality of the criminal trial, and shows the differences in the legal positions of the ECHR on impartiality as compared to the Russian legal doctrine, including provisions, reflected in the acts of the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation. The paper also shows the drawbacks of the modern Russian criminal procedure law that does not create sufficient guarantees to implement impartiality of the court, in comparison with the achievements of the arbitration procedure law of Russia that adopted legal positions of the ECHR and on its basis created a promising system of guarantees of impartiality of the arbitration court. The author recommends an analogue of such a system to be used in the criminal procedure legislation of Russia.

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