Judicial Discretion: The Concept and Essential Features

Abstract

The modern Russian legal doctrine has not yet developed a unified approach to understanding judicial discretion. The content of this term seems to be very complex and ambiguous. The analysis of the legislation shows that the discretion of the law enforcement officer (investigator, prosecutor or person in charge of an inquiry) is possible when applying the norms of various branches of law. The importance of defining the most complete and precise concept of judicial discretion is dictated by the complexity of establishing its boundaries.The objectives of the study are to derive the definition of judicial discretion based on a critical assessment of doctrinal definitions and to identify its essential features. The results reflected in this paper show that a considerable number of authors understand judicial discretion in different ways; at the same time, the points of view of scholars still have common ground. The result of the study provides the author’s definition of judicial discretion and the allocation of its essential features.