Russian Journal of Legal Studies (Moscow)

This article examines the institution of blood feuds as a form of retribution and early criminal punishment. It elucidates the reasons and conditions for the emergence of blood feuds and their role in stabilizing society. This article explores the specific features of blood feud procedures among different cultures, including the Jews, Slavs, and Germanic people, particularly focusing on who had the right to commit blood feuds and against whom they could be directed. Finally, the article analyzes the decline of blood feuds due to the establishment of a state monopoly on punishment.

This article examines the legal institution of service bondage, which was prevalent in 15^th–17^th century Russia. It explores the borrowed nature of this phenomenon and traces the evolutionary development of social relations in lending and usury. Justification for the rationale for the formation, development, and eventual disappearance of the institution of service bondage was provided. Additionally, the article reviews the most prominent approaches to understanding this phenomenon within the scientific community.

This article examines the implementation of various elements of the legal tax structure in the context of advancing digital technologies. It systematically analyzes how digital technologies are applied to specific tax elements in contemporary tax practices.

This article addresses the statutory regulations for subsidies granted to legal entities and entrepreneurs that produce goods, works, and services. It draws attention to the fact that Article 78 of the Budget Code of the Russian Federation forms the basis for this regulation, setting out the general objectives for providing these subsidies and listing the regulatory legal acts that govern specific cases, conditions, and procedures for their provision. The legal regulation of these issues is crucial in law enforcement practice because violations of the terms and procedures for providing subsidies can lead to legally established negative consequences. The article notes that in recent years, there has been a trend toward the unification of subsidy provision rules, with the Government of the Russian Federation playing a key role in this development..

The exercise of the employer’s authority is closely intertwined with the bearing of entrepreneurial risk. Crucially, the rule that an employee’s position should not be worsened prohibits transferring this risk to employees. However, realizing this rule is challenging when employers choose between alternative legal constructions, each compliant with the "letter" of the law, to mediate managerial decisions. This article aims to identify restrictions on employers’ use of legal constructions that contradict the goals, objectives, and principles of labor legislation. It analyzes court practices concerning the prohibition of shifting entrepreneurial risk to employees within the context of business platformization, the nonlinkage of urgency in relations with counterparts to employment relations, and the interplay between remuneration and labor discipline. Additionally, it examines the "competition" between alternative legal constructions for terminating employment contracts due to unsatisfactory test results or disciplinary breaches. The study concludes that there is a trend in law enforcement practice to evaluate the competition of legal constructs based on their purposes and procedural safeguards provided to employees. Thus, labor legislation and law enforcement practice establish boundaries for exercising employer authority. The findings can inform the implementation and application of labor law.

This article addresses the issue of conflicting the principle of equality of citizens before the courts and the principle of equality of arms in action, using enforcement proceedings as an example. This confusion may arise from the inability to support these principles with constitutional backing, given that enforcement proceedings are not stages of legal proceedings. Conversely, the independence of these principles is confirmed by the doctrine and legislation of procedural branches of law, where they are recognized as distinct. In this context, this article seeks to identify general criteria for differentiating between the principle of equality of citizens before courts and the principle of equality of arms in action. This article concludes with two criteria: the specific characteristics of equal parties that do not relate to advantages or discrimination in their legal status and the procedural status of parties compared within each principle.

This article examines legislative regulations concerning the admissibility of foreign evidence. It focuses on the criteria for accepting such evidence and compares evidence obtained within Russia with that obtained in other jurisdictions. Additionally, this article analyzes the challenges associated with recognizing data as foreign evidence.

INTRODUCTION. In the context of the active development of information technologies and their integration into the main models of judicial proceedings, the functions and role of the court in considering a criminal case on its merits have become a highly relevant topic of modern science. On one hand, many scientists have focused on strengthening the adversarial nature of legal proceedings, ensuring a balance of power between the parties, and building mechanisms to guarantee the right to judicial protection. However, legal proceedings that do not pursue any normatively fixed goals lead to excessive formalism, as the adversarial system remains the only proven method for establishing the circumstances of a case. This approach does not fully align with the principles of justice and fairness in the final verdict. The International Criminal Court (ICC) embodies a scientific approach to solving the problem of combining various forms of legal proceedings and ensuring a balance of power between the parties, partly by assigning an active role to the court and aiming to achieve truth in the process. The ICC’s criminal process results from scientific modeling that considers identified doctrinal trends. The high degree of commonality in the approaches of leading lawyers within the Rome Statute of the ICC suggests their universality. This article explores the theoretical and practical aspects of combining process models in the ICC Trial Chamber activities.

MATERIALS AND METHODS. The methodological basis of this article comprises general scientific and special methods for understanding legal phenomena and processes in the field of international criminal procedure. These include the method of system-structural analysis, the formal logical method, the method for synthesizing sociolegal phenomena, and historical description.

RESULTS. This article confirms the relevance of addressing the functions and role of the court in considering a criminal case and its merits in modern criminal procedure research. Using the ICC Trial Chamber’s regulatory and organizational peculiarities, it substantiates that the adversarial model of the criminal process does not preclude assigning an active role to the court in examining the facts to be proved. It also supports setting the goal of achieving material truth, which is essential for completing a complete, comprehensive, and objective study of the case materials. Furthermore, there are three levels in the structure of the ICC Trial Chamber’s functions and powers, each of which is embodied in law enforcement practice to facilitate a special and flexible combination of the adversarial and investigative principles of legal proceedings.

DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION. This article proves that a court’s active role in criminal proceedings does not conflict with the adversarial nature of proceedings. An analysis of the provisions of the Rome Statute of the ICC, the Rules of Procedure and Evidence, and the jurisprudence of international tribunals highlights the advantages and disadvantages of the ICC Trial Chamber.