Abstract
The paper deals with the problem of correlation of key concepts of criminal procedure - “legal rights” and “authoritative powers”. The authors establish that today, the legal definitions of these concepts are missing and the doctrinal interpretations do not solve the problem of their ambiguity and consequently the problem of different interpretation both in the procedural science theory and in legal precedents. It is shown that in the frame of criminal procedure, the right of any party to the criminal process should be legally provided due to the domination of the mandatory method of legal regulation. In the context of distinction of the concepts under consideration, the authors give attention to the different legal natures of the discretionary and mandatory powers. The authors emphasize that in science, the conventional point of view about the inseparability of legal rights and corresponding obligations of other parties within a certain legal relationship exists. However, the paper justifies the conclusion that such relation in respect to the criminal procedure authorities is not so evident. Such an approach is exactly valid for the mandatory powers and for the part of discretionary powers but for those where the law allows the active variant of their implementation only - through the actions but not nonperformance. Reasoning from this fact, the authors consider the authoritative criminal-procedural powers as a particular case of legal rights having, however, a number of essential peculiar features. The paper shows as well that, according to the general rule, it is prohibited to consider the concept “powers” as an ordinary collection of rights and obligations because the rights and obligations in respect of authoritative empowered parties are often an integral whole and compose a continuous system.
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