Conceptual Provisions of the Constitutional and Legal Definition “Prosecutor’s Office of the Russian Federation

The 2020 constitutional reform resulted in introduction of the “Prosecutor’s Office of the Russian Federation” definition into the Constitution of the Russian Federation. It contains conceptual provisions that, according to the author, contribute to the expansion of knowledge about the public law institute named “prosecutor’s office”.

Defining the ‘prosecutor’s office’ of the Russian Federation through the closest genus “system of bodies” allows us to distinguish between the concepts “Prosecutor’s office as a single federal centralized system of bodies” and “Prosecutor’s office system as a single federal centralized system of prosecutor’s offices and organizations”. This makes it possible to exclude the conflict of norms of Part 1, Article 129 of the Constitution of the Russian Federation and paragraph 1 of Article 11 of the Federal Law “On the Prosecutor’s Office of the Russian Federation”. The substantive difference between the prosecutor’s office as a system and the prosecutor’s office system is due to their different elemental composition and structure; it also manifests itself in the sources (forms) of regulatory regulation. Federal law determines the procedure for the activities of the prosecutor’s office. Regulatory acts of the Prosecutor General of the Russian Federation regulate the issues of organizing the activities of the prosecutor’s office system.

The constitutional and legal function of prosecutorial supervision, by virtue of the direct effect of the Basic Law, can be carried out in almost any sphere of legal relations, regardless of the legal status of their parties. As for legislative expansion of the legal subjects supervised by the prosecutor’s office, it is proposed to focus on the conceptual model of prosecutorial assistance, in which the prosecutor primarily embodies the source of legality, providing everyone with the opportunity to carry out their activities in line with the law on the basis of objective and reasoned information, including in the form of an act of prosecutorial response.

The function of criminal prosecution is implemented by the prosecutor’s office both in the judicial stages of criminal proceedings and in pre-trial proceedings in a criminal case, within which it is separated from the function of public prosecutor’s supervision.

The constitutional and legal novel on the prosecutor’s office’s own powers requires their specification in the federal law and harmonization with the powers of the prosecutor’s office of the Russian Federation and prosecutors.

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