On Independence, Impartiality and Justification of Judicial Power

The article considers the principle of independence of the judiciary as one of the guarantees of its objectivity and impartiality, and at the same time as the primary task of the judicial policy. A dangerous decline in the level of public confidence in the judiciary is signaled. The theoretical basis for the proposed solutions in the article is the doctrine of the adversarial proceedings and the idea of the judiciary as a mediating link between the state and civil society. The method of achieving this goal is: the formation of an effective content of the judiciary; ensuring due process of law; establishing effective civilian control over the judiciary. It is argued that the role of the trigger for this can be accomplished by four primary measures: the establishment of bodies whose collective name is “magistracy councils” for the formation of an independent judiciary, bringing together representatives of civil society and the state; a significant increase in the jurisdiction of the jury court so that every criminal case (perhaps, with the exception of cases of crimes of a small public danger) can be considered at will of the accused with their participation; democratization of the institute of justices of the peace, which are considered “miniature jury”; the introduction in the criminal process of the institute of investigative judges, whose main task, subsidiary to the activities of the parties, is the legalization (almost exclusively at the request of the parties) of judicial evidence and the decision on the possibility of committal the case to court. It is proposed to increase the motivation of citizens to participate in the consideration of criminal cases as jurors, namely, by establishing additional lists of candidates for jurors, formed through voluntary initiative inclusion of candidates in it (self-recording) through the use of electronic resources. Compared to other publications devoted to the issue of judicial independence, this article proposes a new approach to its solution, based not on strengthening bureaucratic control over the activities of judges, but on maximizing the democratization of judicial activities, in a certain sense “denationalizing” in favor of civil society.