Permanent changes in the criminal procedure law as a property of modern law

The aim of the article is to establish the extent to which the understanding of legality influences the criminal procedure law and law enforcement practice. The analysis of the professional literature on the topic made it possible to conclude that in the Soviet period of state development the most common understanding of legality in theory and practice was that of a requirement to comply and enforce laws and by-laws by all subjects of legal relations. At the same time, all the authors understood legality as a legal reality and indicated its main property: stability (permanence) of legislation. Frequent and significant changes in the law, even if they are aimed at the good of society, if most people are not legally aware of them, entail a nihilistic attitude to law, and these changes are destructive rather than constructive. If stability and permanence of laws are a property of legality, and legality is the preservation of order, frequent changes in the law lead to disorder and lawlessness. Thus, there is a very surprising phenomenon of law: the more laws, the more lawlessness, the maximum of law is the maximum of lawlessness. A general analysis of the development of criminal justice in Russia over the past 26 years shows the following important regularities: changes in (often complete negation of) certain legal institutions; refusal and return to individual legal institutions and procedures, unsystematic borrowing and continuity of law both from Russian history and from world experience. Since 2001, for instance, after the adoption of the Code of Criminal Procedure of the Russian Federation (RF CCP), 224 amendments were made to it by federal laws and 25 by decisions of the Constitutional Court. Since 2001, the appellate and cassation procedures for examining criminal cases have been changed nine times. Art. 144 of the RF CCP has been amended six times since the Code was adopted. This situation in lawmaking leads to a closed circle. The society is not satisfied with the activities of the investigation bodies, the prosecutor's office and the court, and expresses its indignation to the authorities. The legislator, trying to satisfy the demands of the society, does not always reasonably change the legislation, the law enforcer does not have time to work out the correct application of the new legislation when it changes again, which causes violations in the application of the law and dissatisfaction of the society with criminal proceedings again. Thus, modern society and the law-enforcer form a different attitude to the essence of legality. Today, it is not permanence but permanent changes of laws that is a property of the principle (method) of legality, the latter considered as a political-legal regime. Frequent changes in the law lead to the ignorance, misinterpretation of it and generate a nihilistic attitude. Only the legislator can solve this problem and, paradoxically, not by changing the law, but vice versa.

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