THE CONSTITUTIONAL COURT OF THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION IN THE MECHANISM OF OVERCOMING GAPS AND CONFLICTS OF CRIMINAL LAW
The question of the place and role of judicial practice in the system of sources of law remains one of the conflicting issues of Russian legal science for many years. The controversy of this issue is due to various factors, primarily the type of the Russian legal system, in which court decisions are not official sources of law. Meanwhile, the persistent trend of convergence of legal systems that has emerged in recent years has led to an increase in the role of judicial decisions in the system of sources of law. Through the levers of constitutional legal proceedings, legal uncertainties of various industry affiliations are eliminated. International legal standards, the practices of foreign countries, changes in the political and military situation in the world, a decrease in the tolerance of peoples, the growth of extremism may serve as the basis for the revision of the regulatory provisions by the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation. The subject of the study is the social relations that have developed in criminal law practice in the process of constitutional proceedings, as well as legislative acts regulating these relations. The purpose of the article is to determine the role of the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation in the mechanism for overcoming gaps and conflicts of criminal law. To achieve this aim, we have identified the following tasks: monitoring the theory and practice of constitutional proceedings in cases of challenging the constitutionality of criminal law norms; study of certain directions of the evolution of criminal legislation, taking into account the decisions of the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation. The methodological basis was formed by various empirical and theoretical research methods. A content analysis of the scientific works of Russian and foreign scientists investigating the impact of judicial practice on the correction of criminal legislation has been carried out. Monitoring of the constitutional complaints of citizens and their associations, challenging the constitutionality of the regulation of various aspects of the general and special parts of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (including the specifics of regulating the circulation of edged weapons, the use of the death penalty, amnesty and pardon, etc.) was carried out. The article uses the decisions of the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation (mainly issued in the form of decisions), as well as the legal positions formulated in them, aimed at eliminating the identified legal uncertainties - conflicts and gaps in criminal law. The dialectical method acted as a methodological basis for obtaining information, formal legal, comparative legal methods, as well as the method of qualitative analysis were used to obtain theoretical conclusions. Regulatory legal acts, judicial practice data were used. The novelty lies in the fact that the presented article highlights the problems arising in law enforcement criminal law practice, the solutions of which are subject to constitutional review, which makes it difficult to apply them in a timely manner. The causality of such revisions is established: the inconsistency of the provisions of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation with each other, the assumed consciousness of such actions of the legislator in situations of lack of logic in some legislative constructions. Other circumstances that may cause the revision of the norms of law by the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation are highlighted. The results of the study may be important for the further development of theoretical ideas about the impact of the practice of constitutional proceedings on the reform of criminal law.