The overview presents the main provisions of the reports delivered at the All-Russian Researchto-Practice Conference “Judicial Review of Administrative Discretion: Theory, Legislation, Law Enforcement Practice”, held on 30 May 2025 at the private educational institution of higher education Siberian Law University (Omsk). Within the framework of the conference topic, participants discussed such issues as: discretion in law-making and administrative enforcement, applied aspects of the theory of administrative discretion, administrative arbitrariness and substantive judicial review, limits of administrative discretion, particularities of exercising administrative discretion in issuing procedural and non-procedural administrative acts, discretion of public administration as an object of administrative justice and as a subject of judicial review, legal subordination of administrative discretion to judicial jurisdiction, review of administrative discretion when applying measures of administrative coercion and in the administrative-jurisdictional activities of the police, judicial review of the justification provided by supervisory authorities for the existence of an “immediate threat,” grounds for judicial intervention in administrative discretion in cases of administrative offences, administrative-procedural principles of judicial review of administrative discretion, the scope of judicial powers in proceedings challenging administrative legal acts, and other related matters. As a result of the discussion, the participants unanimously adopted a resolution recognizing the expediency of developing a draft Resolution of the Plenum of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation (in the form of a standalone act or an act amending and supplementing the Resolution of the Plenum of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation dated 28 June 2022 No. 21 “On Certain Issues of the Application by Courts of the Provisions of Chapter 22 of the Code of Administrative Judicial Procedure of the Russian Federation and Chapter 24 of the Arbitration Procedure Code of the Russian Federation”) and/or a review of judicial practice of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation, containing detailed provisions on the criteria for judicial review of the legality of discretionary decisions, actions (inaction) of state authorities, other public bodies, local self-government bodies, officials, state or municipal employees, and other bodies and persons vested with public authority.

This article examines the key ideas and historical-cultural concepts set forth by the Russian historian D. Ya. Samokvasov in his research on the Old Russian State. The article covers the biography and scholarly activity of the scholar and provides a sequential analysis of his major works. The focus of this study is how D. Ya. Samokvasov considers the formation of the state in the context of historical factors, cultural interactions, and international politics. The methodology used by the scholar in his research is also highlighted, in particular, the method of historical-genetic comparisons and the method of survivals. A universal scheme of social development at the early stages of statehood is presented. The main achievements of D. Ya. Samokvasov in developing the stages of the evolution of the Old Russian State—from primary urban settlement to a union of cities, and then to the state—are disclosed. A detailed analysis is given of the scholar’s ideas about the genesis of key political and legal institutions. Samokvasov’s views on the veche (popular assembly), the institution of princely power, and the priestly authority are examined. Attention is also paid to his views on source studies, as well as the role of Old Russian chronicles in reconstructing historical events that shaped statehood. Samokvasov’s interpretation of the transformation of the princely institution after the Norman conquest is discussed, particularly its evolution into the supreme body of state power, which the scholar associated primarily with the Norman princes’ perception of Rus’as a single personal domain. The article separately describes the historian of law’s views on the role of the prince and his retinue in ensuring the unity of Rus’, and on the significance of the adoption of Christianity, which altered the understanding of the prince’s role in society. It is emphasized that D. Ya. Samokvasov not only described events and acts but also considered it important to interpret their causes and consequences, leading to a deeper understanding of the sociopolitical structure of society. The main conclusion of the article is that the works of D. Ya. Samokvasov constitute an important contribution to the study of the history of the Old Russian state and law, offering a systematic approach to analyzing state formation and its role in shaping national identity. Contextualizing the scholar’s ideas in light of modern research makes them not only relevant but also essential for understanding Russia’s historical and legal heritage.

The article is devoted to researching and analyzing the principal units of the conceptual and terminological apparatus used in the legal regulation of land (land-management) relations, as well as legal relations in the sphere of land surveying. The units under study are the key categories and concepts employed by the legislator to designate the basic elements of land relations—pomest’e (service allotment), votchina (patrimonial estate), estate, dacha (land grant), land plot. The Author examines and analyzes how the legislator used these units. Based on the analysis conducted, an assessment is given of the terms under study in terms of how adequately they reflect their legal essence in land (landmanagement) relations and in the surveying process. The time frame of the study covers the period from the 16th to the 18th century. The purpose of the research is to identify the range of core legislative acts governing land-management relations and to reveal, on their basis, the features of the conceptual and terminological apparatus used by the legislator to denote the key concepts of land law and the surveying process. The objectives are to analyze legislative acts in the field of land-management regulation and surveying, to determine the principal units of the conceptual-terminological apparatus in this sphere, and to identify the specifics of how the terminology used was normatively consolidated. As a result of examining a large array of legislative acts and historiographical material (works by pre-revolutionary legal historians), the Author concludes that the conceptual apparatus was insufficiently developed, evolutionary in nature, and closely interconnected with the development of land-management relations—in particular, with the evolution of the pomest’e system of landholding. The methodological foundation consists of such methods of scholarly inquiry as the historical-legal and formal-legal methods of legal science. The conclusion is drawn that the pre-revolutionary legislator did not use the terms “land plot” (zemel’nyi uchastok) and “plot” (uchastok) in the conceptual apparatus of land relations; instead, as an independent object of land relations, the term dacha was used.

The subject of the study comprises the norms of the budget legislation of the Russian Federation regulating relations arising in connection with measures of financial liability imposed on public-law entities when they fail to comply with the conditions of interbudgetary subsidy agreements. The purpose of the work is to define the financial liability of public-law entities. The objectives are: to analyze the legal regulation of such financial liability; to determine the limits of the powers of the highest executive bodies of state authority to establish measures of liability for budget violations; to assess the consequences of applying financial-liability measures; and to develop proposals for improving legislation. The relevance of the work is due to the absence in scholarly literature of a theoretical and legal analysis of measures of financial liability of the constituent entities of the Russian Federation and municipal formations for non-fulfilment of interbudgetary subsidy agreements with a view to their conformity with higher-ranking legal acts, which also predetermines the scholarly and practical novelty of the paper. The methodological basis consists of the formal-legal, structuralfunctional, comparative, research and analysis methods applied to scholarly and normative material. The article substantiates that measures of financial liability for failure to comply with interbudgetary subsidy agreements are not supported by legitimate means of state coercion. Such measures also cannot be determined by the parties to an interbudgetary subsidy agreement, since this agreement, being a special public contract, may not contain financial-liability measures not provided for by federal legislation. Based on an analysis of legislation and law-enforcement practice, it is argued that the measures of liability and the procedure for their application must be established by federal laws, rather than by acts of the highest executive authorities, because delegated regulation should detail rather than supplement the law. The existing mechanism of financial liability contradicts the constitutional principle of equality of all before the law and creates conditions for the recovery of penalty funds from the budgets of public-law entities and from the population as a whole. In this regard, the study substantiates the need to establish administrative liability for officials for failure to fulfil the conditions of interbudgetary subsidy agreements and other agreements. The proposals advanced in the work may be used to improve interbudgetary relations.

The subject of the research is the norms of the legislation of the Omsk Region regulating relations in the sphere of social protection of the population. The aim of the study is to consider the Code of the Omsk Region on Social Protection of Certain Categories of Citizens within the system of social-security legislation. To achieve this aim, it is necessary to determine the legal foundations of codifying legislation in the sphere of social protection of certain categories of citizens; to characterize the legal regulation of individual social-support measures by the norms of the budget law; to conduct a legal analysis of certain provisions of the Code; and to develop proposals for improving regional legislation. The methodological basis is a set of scholarly methods: formal-legal, structural-functional, comparative, as well as methods of searching and analyzing scholarly and normative material. The scholarly base consists of works in the field of social-security law. Based on the research conducted, the article substantiates that a code is a form of the external expression of a regional law that does not have exclusive priority over other legislative acts of the Omsk Region and cannot proclaim its own supremacy over other normative legal— including legislative—acts of the Omsk Region in the sphere of social protection of certain categories of citizens. It does not contain the principal—still less the complete—body of norms regulating social-security relations at the regional level and only de jure functions as the basic normative legal act in the sphere of social protection of the population of the Omsk Region. Drawing on an analysis of the provisions of the Code and law-enforcement practice, the article argues that the amounts of monthly cash payments to citizens must be established by that legislative act rather than by the regional budget law, since the legal nature and subject matter of the latter are connected exclusively with state revenues and expenditures. The need is substantiated to revise individual social-support measures that have legislative deficiencies in their implementation, restrict citizens’ rights and lawful interests, and do not comply with federal legislation. To remedy these shortcomings, proposals for amending regional legislation are presented

. The subject of the research comprises administrative-law norms that formalize administrative-procedural instruments as methods and techniques aimed at realizing citizens’ rights to protection from domestic violence, as well as scholarly works of domestic and foreign researchers and empirical data. The purpose of the scholarly article is to develop a concept of administrative-procedural instruments—grounded in analysis and other research methods—both in general-theoretical and administrative terms and in their specific understanding through the prism of the legal mechanism for ensuring the rights of citizens subjected to domestic violence, and to offer scientifically substantiated conclusions on their significance for theory and practice. Achievement of this aim was made possible by solving the following tasks: defining the concept and essence of administrative-procedural instruments in their general-theoretical and administrative-managerial senses; developing a concept of the instruments of the mechanism under study, their types, and properties of application (based on the mechanism of legal liability). The methodological basis rests on universal principles of scientific cognition—objectivity, interconnectedness of phenomena and their characteristics, and the unity of theory and practice. The work employs principal theoretical methods (induction, deduction, analysis, and synthesis), which made it possible to analyze prior scholarly findings and to study normative legal acts and other sources on the topic. The formal-legal method facilitated the study of the concepts of legal and administrative-law instruments and their properties. The use of structural analysis made it possible to identify the types of administrative and procedural tools and to reveal the cyclical nature of their application. The principal scholarly results are: the development of the concept of administrative-procedural instruments, including those employed in the mechanism for ensuring the rights of citizens subjected to domestic violence; disclosing their types using as an example proceedings in cases of administrative offences under Article 6.1.1 of the Code of Administrative Offences of the Russian Federation (Battery) and other offences. The cyclical use of legal instruments in the mechanism of legal liability is also considered, and the presence of analogous cyclicality is noted in mechanisms counteracting offences committed in a number of social relations. These results made it possible to address the tasks set out in the article and to achieve its aim.

The article is devoted to a historical-legal analysis of the evolution of the institution of voluntary abandonment of a crime in Russian criminal law, from the Old Russian period to the modern norms of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation. The study covers the key stages of the formation of this legal phenomenon, demonstrating how approaches to differentiating liability for incomplete crimes have changed under the influence of social, political, and legal factors. The origins of the institution are traced to the Russkaya Pravda (11th–13th centuries), where norms already existed on mitigation of punishment for refraining from unlawful actions (for example, reducing the fine for drawing a sword without striking) or complete exemption from liability upon elimination of the consequences. Particular attention is paid to the period of the Muscovite state (15th–17th centuries), when the Sudebniks of 1497 and 1550 and the Council Code of 1649 indirectly recognized the significance of crime stages, although voluntary abandonment had not yet been expressly enshrined. Aturning point came with the legislation of Peter I—particularly the Military Articles of 1715—which for the first time distinguished stages of criminal activity (preparation, attempt) and provided for reduction of punishment in case of repentance. The article further analyzes the Code of Criminal and Correctional Punishments of 1845, which systematized norms on voluntary abandonment, including exoneration of accomplices who timely prevented a crime. It shows how Soviet law (the RSFSR Criminal Codes of 1922, 1926, 1960) transformed the institution, shifting the focus to the absence of corpus delicti in cases of voluntary abandonment, and how the case law of the Supreme Court of the USSR established criteria of voluntariness and awareness. The concluding part elucidates Article 31 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, under which voluntary abandonment is construed as cessation of preparation or attempt with awareness of the possibility of completing the crime. It is emphasized that the modern approach combines the traditions of pre-revolutionary law (flexibility in evaluating motives) and the achievements of Soviet legal thought (emphasis on crime prevention). The article is addressed to lawyers, legal historians, and students interested in the evolution of criminal-law institutions. The significance of the research lies in demonstrating the continuity of legal traditions and in updating historical experience to improve modern mechanisms for encouraging the abandonment of criminal activity.

This work aims to examine the trace picture in cyberspace under contemporary conditions. The concept of a digital trail (in our treatment—electronic-digital) was proposed by V. B. Vekhov back in 2008 and refined in later publications. Tracking the trail of electronic-digital traces is of key importance in investigating crimes involving the use of information-technology devices. However, numerous new forms of information and means of concealing traces in cyberspace have now emerged. Certain modern concepts in electronics substantially influence the transformation of the electronic-digital trail, introducing significant changes into its chain, creating gaps, diverting it, anonymizing the start and/or end point of a request, fragmenting and hiding traces. The aim of the paper is to reveal the specifics of the trail in the context of non-classical forms of placement and use of electronic information. The article analyzes how the trail changes when using virtual machines with multi-level nesting and virtualization tools (e.g., VPN services), polymorphic programs, distributed and cloud information, blockchain, RAID arrays, means of concealing the electronic-digital trail, and certain promising developments in computer technology. The study relies on dialectical materialism as a general method and on general scientific methods (analysis, synthesis, modeling, extrapolation, etc.). As a result, specific properties and characteristics of the electronic-digital trail are identified for the concepts considered in the sphere of electronic information. It is established that new concepts in the field of electronic information significantly alter the trace picture in cyberspace and require specific approaches; therefore, research at the intersection of technical sciences, programming, and criminalistics is of particular importance—research that reveals the distinctive features of new technologies and forms of information and that requires the development of specific forensic recommendations. Given ongoing scientific and technological progress, such research must accompany technological innovations on a permanent basis and, in some cases (e.g., quantum technologies), be forward-looking, providing law-enforcement authorities with effective tools even before the technologies themselves are widely disseminated and used for criminal purposes.

This work seeks to substantiate that keystroke dynamics (typing pattern) falls within the subject matter of digital criminalistics. To achieve this aim, the Author employs an interdisciplinary approach, methods of synthesis and analysis, as well as analogy and modeling, which make it possible to project general features onto a specific frequent phenomenon of modern reality. The work consistently characterizes the phenomenon of keystroke dynamics, raises general issues of digital criminalistics, identifies the features of digital traces, and compares them with the phenomenon of keystroke dynamics. An authorial definition of keystroke dynamics is provided, and the need to intensify its forensic study is emphasized so as to enhance the effectiveness of efforts to detect and investigate crimes where accurate identification of the typist matters (dissemination of extremist messages, preparatory criminal activity on online platforms, creation of “death groups,” etc.). Debated issues of digital criminalistics as a new subdiscipline are considered. The positions of various authors are analyzed regarding the name of the field, the terminological designation of traces studied, and the determination of their nature, and the Author’s own position is substantiated. Specific features of digital traces (material yet mediated character, belonging to computer information, remote accessibility, copyability, abstractness, etc.) are highlighted, and the correspondence of keystroke dynamics to these features is demonstrated—keystroke dynamics being a special typing skill that finds reflection in system logs on a computer or in the memory of specialized technical devices. The study confirms the initial scientific hypothesis: when recorded in the memory of a computer or a specialized device, keystroke dynamics falls within the subject area of digital criminalistics, as it is a digital trace and, in this capacity, can be used to solve crime-control tasks. Its study should become an alternative to traditional handwriting examinations in today’s conditions of transition to electronic document flow and digital communication.

The article attempts to describe a tactical operation to locate and detain a wanted motor vehicle using modern information technologies. Despite a decline in thefts and unlawful takings of vehicles, these crimes cause significant harm to owners. The development and implementation of roadtraffic monitoring systems have a significant impact on the tactics of searching for a vehicle that has become the target of criminal encroachment. The subject of the research is the patterns of obtaining (collecting) forensic information during a tactical operation to locate and detain a wanted automobile using modern information technologies. The aim is to identify and solve epistemic and organization-altactical problems in the search for stolen vehicles and to develop scientifically grounded proposals and recommendations to improve this area of law-enforcement activity. The study uses general scientific methods of cognition (analysis, synthesis, deduction, systems-structural method, description) as well as special methods (questionnaires, statistical methods). The empirical base consists of official statistics of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia. The conclusion is drawn that the most effective resolution of the investigative situation (the stolen vehicle has not been found and the perpetrator has not been identified) is to conduct a tactical operation consisting of three stages. Particular attention in conducting the operation should be given to the use of road-traffic monitoring systems (the special software “Pautina”), departmental databases (FIS GIBDD-M), as well as the collection of information recorded by video-surveillance cameras. Based on the analysis of modern technologies for obtaining forensic information associated with unlawful encroachments on vehicles, a tactical operation is developed for locating and detaining a wanted automobile. A classification of the tactical operation is defined; its object, aim and tasks are identified; and the order of actions by the investigating subject to implement the operation is set out. For clarity and ease of use, the operation is presented in the form of an algorithm.

The article examines the features of the institution of the civil claim in Russian criminal proceedings, focusing attention on the problems of interaction between criminal-procedural and civil law mechanisms. It analyzes the regulatory framework governing the status of the civil plaintiff and identifies shortcomings in current legislation that hinder the full protection of victims’ rights. The main provisions of the article concern normative aspects determined by the Criminal Procedure Code of the Russian Federation, as well as established approaches in judicial practice. The conclusion is substantiated that the formal structure of criminal proceedings does not correspond to the specifics of civil-law disputes arising as a result of criminal offences. Particular attention is paid to the allocation of rights and duties in relation to proof, and to the issue of recognizing as evidence the testimony and explanations of the civil plaintiff which, although legally significant for proving damage and its compensation, do not formally fall within the list of admissible evidence in a criminal case. Paths are proposed for improving the existing regulation aimed at simplifying the evidentiary procedure and strengthening guarantees for the protection of victims’ interests. The necessity is emphasized of harmonizing the norms of civil and criminal procedure to enhance the effectiveness of institutions protecting the rights of crime victims. Proposals are made to amend criminal-procedural law to give evidentiary value to the civil plaintiff’s explanations. The Author’s conclusions confirm the need to develop the institution of the civil claim to increase access to justice and ensure the principle of full compensation for damage to victims. Based on a study of doctrinal provisions, norms of criminal-procedural and civil legislation, and judicial practice materials, the key features and contradictions of the institution are identified, and ways to resolve them are proposed to ensure effective protection of victims’ property rights.