About the department

The Department of Criminal Law, Process and Criminalistics (formerly the Department of Judicial Systems and Criminal Law) was established by the decision of the HSE Academic Council on June 26, 2020 as a structural unit of the HSE Faculty of Law.

The Department carries out educational and scientific activities in the fields of Russian and foreign legal theory and practice, mediating national justice systems or directly related to them, or, in other words, judicial and criminal law.
The Department brings together HSE faculty specializing in such fields of scientific knowledge as:

- organization of the judiciary and law enforcement agencies;
- criminal proceedings;
- enforcement proceedings;
- criminal and penal enforcement law;
- criminology;
- forensics.

A characteristic feature of the Department, which makes it unique in the Russian academic space, is the joint scientific research and teaching of issues related to the organization of judicial power and its implementation in all types of legal proceedings. This approach is conditioned by the constitutional recognition of the high importance of judicial power and judicial protection in a state governed by the rule of law, the commonality of the principles of justice and most of the means of their implementation in various types of legal proceedings, and also has a long—standing, pre-revolutionary, doctrinal basis - the concept of judicial law, which is actively revived in modern Russian jurisprudence by the faculty of the Department.

Criminal law organically complements the general procedural orientation of the Department, since, unlike other branches of substantive law, it is applied only by courts, is subject to almost the same general legal and constitutional principles as judicial activity, and in modern conditions it is judicial interpretation that is the leading factor in its transformation and development.

The Department includes a forensic laboratory.