Criteria for the Quality of Judicial Decisions in Criminal Proceedings

Abstract

The quality of judicial decisions is one of the main factors according to which the fairness of justice, the activities of the judiciary, as well as the law enforcement system as a whole, and the ability of the state to effectively protect individual rights and freedoms are assessed. The quality of court decisions significantly affects the assessment of the judicial system by society, is an important condition for trust in the court. The purpose of the article is to identify criteria for assessing the quality of decisions made by the court. The methodological basis of the research is the universal dialectical method of scientific cognition, which made it possible to study the subject of research in relation to other legal phenomena, as well as general scientific methods of cognition (analysis, synthesis, induction, deduction, analogy, modeling) and private scientific methods of cognition (formally legal, historical-legal, comparative-legal, concrete-sociological. Conclusions. The quality of judicial decisions in criminal proceedings directly depends on compliance with the requirements imposed on them. Such requirements include legality, reasonableness and fairness. Enforceability, completeness, reliability, consistency, persuasiveness, certainty, unconditionality, transparency, clarity and comprehensibility, correctness are also often considered as criteria for the quality of court decisions. The criteria for the quality of judicial decisions can be contained not only in the norms of the law that define the basic requirements for them – legality, validity, motivation, fairness – but also be in other sources, or even be actually outside the framework of legal regulation (completeness, reliability, consistency, correctness). Evaluation of the quality of solutions should also be carried out in terms of these criteria.