The Specific Character of the “Unclean Hands” Doctrine and the Balance of Probabilities (Preponderance of Documents) Standard in the Russian and Foreign Legal Systems

The relevance of the study is due to the necessity of making more precise some points referred to the problem range of fairness of the judicial proceedings, in particular, to the “unclean hands” doctrine, as well as the balance of probabilities (preponderance of documents) standard. With regard to this, the paper is aimed at finding out the essence of these legal maxims that are widely used in the international and foreign legal practice but have failed to get widespread in the Russian law so far. The main method of the research is the technical legal one that allows finding out the legal specific character of the phenomena under consideration as applied to various legal systems. In order to obtain the most valid scientific results, in preparing the paper the general scientific methods (the dialectical one, the systemic one, analysis, synthesis, analogy, specialization, and generalization) as well as the special legal ones (the technical legal and the comparative legal one) were also used. The paper presents legal regulation of the “unclean hands” doctrine of law and the balance of probabilities (preponderance of documents) standard in the international law and in legislation of foreign countries and explores various scientific approaches to defining them. The material is not only of theoretical interest but it has also the practical value for improving the Russian procedural law.