THE DISPUTE ABOUT THE DEGREE OF VERIFICATION OF THE JUDICIAL LEGAL POSITIONS OF THE PLENUM OF THE SUPREME COURT OF THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION AND JUDICIAL PRECEDENT IN CRIMINAL PROCEDURE
The article conducts a research on the scientific and empirical substantiation of the legal positions of the Plenum of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation and judicial precedents. For this purpose, the author compares these legal categories from the point of view of science and practice. In addition, there are given the author’s definitions of the concepts «legal positions of the Plenum of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation» and «judicial precedent». The attention is focused on the comparison of the degrees of verifiability of the studied categories. The author notes that the decisions of the Plenum of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation have five degrees of verifiability, which is confirmed by their representativeness and empirical validity. In the course of the research were studied the normative, applied and doctrinal aspects of the dispute. As a result, the author concluded that the legal positions of the plenum in the criminal process are more verifiable than the judicial precedent. The procedure for adopting a resolution of the Plenum is much simpler and faster than the procedure for adopting normative legal acts in the highest legislative body of power in Russia. But at the same time, the significance and value of the decisions of the Plenum of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation is not at all lower than that of other sources of criminal procedure law.