Review

The international standards of proof is a guideline in the implementation of normative regulation of the procedural legal relations and ensuring of the unity of judicial practice. In the doctrine of the criminal process to research of the standards of proof, including legal, a lot of attention is devoted, but a unambiguous position on understanding of their concept is not expressed today. The absence of a single conceptual-categorical basis complicates the understanding of international standards of proof and their implementation in the domestic criminal process.

In this regard, the author has set at aims to disclose the concept of «standards of proof» and determine their place in the system of the conceptual-categorical apparatus of the theory of criminal procedural proof.

Taking into account etymological, semantic, epistemological and psychological aspects, the author delimits the content of terms: 1) «standards of proof», which contains in its essence the concept of «proof» and reflects the system of rules, which are normatively entrenched and formed in the judicial practice and ensure the formation by the subject of proof of a totality of relevant, admissible and authentic evidences, sufficient to achieve by the results of their assessment of the level of conviction, necessary for the adoption of the appropriate procedural decision; 2) «standards of proofness» (they are covered by the notion of «standards of proof» in the doctrine of the criminal process in the countries of the Anglo-Saxon legal system), which is based on the concept of «sufficiency of evidences» and reflects the system of rules, which are determined by the norms of the criminal procedural law and established in the judicial practice and allow the subject of proof to form on the basis of the available totality of sufficient evidences the level of conviction, necessary for the adoption of the appropriate procedural decision.

The author concludes, that the concept of «standards of proof» is wider, than the concept of «standards of proofness», and, unlike it, allows to take into account not only the sufficiency of evidences as their systemic attribute, but also the individual attributes of each evidence – relevance, admissibility and authenticity. In this aspect, the concept of «standards of proof» goes beyond the assessment of evidences from the point of view of their sufficiency and allows to take into account also the rules of their collection and verification as well as the rules of assessment of their relevance, admissibility and authenticity, which complies with the requirements of the Criminal Procedural Code of Ukraine and formed on its based judicial practice of the Supreme Court.

Keywords: criminal procedural proof, criminal procedural category, standards of proof, standards of proofness.