Correlation of notions of principles and common conditions of criminal procedure

The principles of criminal procedure are the main regulations, which characterize thecriminal procedure in whole, its institutions, steps, procedural status of subjects. As far as each principle is a basic norm fixed in law, itscontent is revealed and specified in many other norms of criminal proceeding law. The principles have a subordinated character againstthe aims of criminal procedure. They are an intermediate part between objectives, which define the activity of criminal proceeding onthe one hand, and concrete norms, which regulate the order of this activity on the other hand. There exists a range of characteristics,proper to the principles of criminal procedure, which allow distinguishing them from other legal norms. The majority of scientists considerthat the determinative criteria of one or another principle presence are its formal certainty and its fixation in a legislative act, i.e. itsregulatory character. Admitting the variety of possible forms of objectification, fixation in law and so on, the author recommends to payattention to common significance of such a principle for criminal procedure: the scope of its spread to criminal procedure as a whole orto its separate institutions. According to these criteria (the degree of generality) all main regulations in criminal procedure can be subdividedinto three groups: 1. General procedural principles. The effect of such principles is spread to all steps of criminal procedure in adirect or indirect way. 2. Principles, which characterize pre-trial stages or procedure itself. 3. Principles, which relate to every separatestep of a criminal procedure. It is named common basis. In the authors opinion, according to a general rule, only general importantregulations, the effect of which is spread to the whole criminal procedure, must be attributed to the principles of criminal procedure. Atonce, some constitutional regulations are considered as general procedural principles. At the same time some other regulations of theConstitution of the Russian Federation, which are spread only to procedures (for instance, publicity of a trial), in the opinion of certainauthors, are not attributed to the principles, but to common basis of a trial, even though the publicity is reflected at different steps ofcriminal procedure.

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