PSYCHOLOGICAL PARTICULARITIES OF JUDGE'S INTERNAL CONVICTIONS

Abstract

The article deals with the psychological features of the judge's moral certainty. It is noted that language is the basis of judicial activity in general and judges in particular. Judicial activity is the pinnacle of the legal sphere; it is the judge who assesses all the circumstances of the case and makes decisions in the last instance (appellate, cassation, and supervisory instances are also the activities of a judge). A judge is an official appointed to a position under the established procedure. A judge administers justice on behalf of the state. Law regulates the activities of a judge and they are subject to the law; it is not allowed to influence the activities of a judge in any way. The court decision entails a number of consequences for participants in criminal proceedings, and they are often negative. It imposes an additional emotional burden on the analyzed process. A court decision should always be in the legal territory, and the law stipulates that a judge makes a decision based on his moral certainty, which requires reducing personal factors and norms of the law to a single denominator. The requirement of a comprehensive, complete, and objective consideration of the whole set of causes of the case correlates with personal reasons: the level of legal awareness, life experience, and intellectual sphere. In making a decision, the judge must resolve all disputes and eliminate possible doubts. It is emphasized that inner certainty is a moral and psychological guarantee of justice, which contributes to the implantation of the educational role of the criminal procedure since it determines the adoption of procedural decisions, the commission of practical actions under their conscience, moral and ethical imperatives. Moral certainty should be based not on abstract thought, but on the assessment of each piece of evidence and cumulative evidence. That is, the moral certainty of a judge should be regarded as a system of elements that form a complex phenomenon, namely: individual knowledge that the judge mastered before the assessment of evidence; the process of obtaining the information, collected or received evidence (reports); the judge's awareness of the degree of his independence; the emotional state of the judge regarding the evidence; strongwilled incentive, which motivates the judge to the practical actions provided for in the criminal procedure law; external validity and argumentation of the decision in procedural acts, etc. Because of this, it is concluded that moral certainty is a subjective and objective category. The subjective side lies in the fact that it is a purely individual result of the cognitive activity of a particular person. Certainty is a qualitatively special state of consciousness, which by its nature cannot be obtained from the outside in the finished form, and cannot be collective, because the subject himself must make it.