The role of judges' assessment of legally significant circumstances in civil and administrative proceedings: on the example of Kaliningrad Oblast

Abstract

The main purpose of the article is to demonstrate on the matter of empirical material the importance of judges’ assessment of legally significant circumstances of the case for Russian civil and administrative proceedings. The subject of the research is the norms of the current procedural Russian legislation, the texts of the appellate rulings on cancellation of the decisions of the courts of first instance in civil and administrative cases of the Kaliningrad region, which entered into force in the period from 01.01.2017 to 31.12.2020, and the data of judicial statistics of the Judicial Department at the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation for 2017-2019. The author uses sociological and mathematical methods, as well as methods of content analysis of the texts of appeal rulings on the cancellation of decisions of the courts of first instance in civil and administrative cases. The novelty of the study is due to the fact that nobody has previously collected and analyzed statistical data on specific grounds for the complete cancellation of decisions of the courts of first instance in appeal order in civil and administrative cases in the Kaliningrad region. As a result of the analysis of specific empirical material, the author establishes that the judges' assessment of legally significant circumstances plays a key role for contemporary Russian legal proceedings. This is especially true for civil proceedings. This conclusion follows from the fact that every 25th decision of the court of first instance in civil proceedings is subject to complete cancellation. In 80% of such cases, the court's incorrect assessment of the legally significant circumstances of the case is the only or one of several grounds for cancellation.