Review

The legal nature of prosecutorial representation and the mission of the Public Prosecutor’s Office in its activities outside the criminal justice sphere, given the specifics of legislative regulation of this function of the prosecutor’s office, become indicators of the controversial nature of their conceptual legal understanding by authorized law enforcement agencies, which necessitates their identification, argumentation and identification of ways to eliminate the factors contributing to such legal understanding, and also the submission of proposals for further development of this legal institute. The purpose of the article is to highlight and provide arguments for the controversial nature of the conceptual legal understanding of the representative function of the Public Prosecutor’s Office through the prism of legal analysis of the relevant case law. It is established that in the context of legal uncertainty inherent to the representative function of the Public Prosecutor’s Office in Ukraine, both at the level of its regulatory regulation and at the level of ensuring proper guarantees for its implementation, a practical understanding of the essence and mechanism of implementation of this function is formed through the prism of legal positions of authorized law enforcement agents, mainly judges. It is stated that judicial practice is quite variable and dynamic, which necessitates its constant monitoring and legal analysis in order to identify trends in its development in relation to the representative function of the Public Prosecutor’s Office, given that the object of prosecutorial representation, understanding of the exceptionality of cases for such representation are ultimately determined by judicial practice, which is periodically subject to change, forming the current concept and trends in the activities of prosecutors in the implementation of this function. It is reasoned that the conceptual legal understanding of the prosecutor’s representation of the State’s interests in the field of child protection is controversial. It is proved that there is a controversy regarding the exceptional cases of prosecutorial representation and the place of the Public Prosecutor’s Office in the mechanism of legal protection of the State’s interests by authorized entities. It is pointed out the possibility of recognizing the absence of budgetary funds for the payment of court fees by the relevant public authority, local self-government body or other entity competent to protect the interests of the State in specific legal relations as an exceptional case of prosecutorial representation. It is substantiated that there is a need for legislative regulation of the priority of the prosecutor’s protection of the State’s interests in the field of child protection, as well as the need to introduce legal certainty in the legislative regulation of the mechanism of protection of the State’s interests by authorized state bodies in general and the place of the prosecutor’s office in this mechanism, in particular. It is justified that there is a need for legislative regulation of the absence of budgetary funds for payment of court fees at the relevant public authority, local self-government body or other subject of power whose competence includes protection of the State’s interests in specific legal relations, as an unconditional basis for the prosecutor to represent the State’s interests in court. Prospective areas for further scientific research in the field of the studied issues are determined.