FACTS AS OBJECTS OF ADMINISTRATIVE-JUDICIAL PROOF: AN EPISTEMOLOGICAL ANALYSIS

It is stressed that in administrative litigation, facts are critical and relevant to usual judicial law enforcement. Therefore, to determine the content and scope of the concept of administrative-judicial evidence, it is necessary, first of all, to understand the nature and functional purpose of the facts established during the verification of evidence. The theory of judicial evidence was mainly formed and developed in the context of legal proceedings, which have a law-enforcing nature (primarily civil and criminal proceedings), and correspond to the traditional model of justice according to their characteristics, while administrative proceedings have some features that allow them to be attributed to the socio-legal model justice. At the same time, in the traditional model of justice, incl. the administrative one, the structure of the persons involved in the case is bipolar; proving is aimed at establishing the facts and is mostly retrospective in nature; a court decision results in legal consequences only for persons participating in the case. However, in the socio-legal model of justice, the parties’ composition has a multipolar character, and the evidentiary activity is not limited to retrospective and covers the establishment of facts-states and events, the occurrence of which is highly probable in the future; the object of proving is generalized facts that extend the limits of a specific dispute and those that acquire the property of relativity in similar court cases initiated by other law subjects. A court decision affects not only the rights and obligations of persons participating in the case but also can change the legal status of a wide range of subjects not involved in the legal process. Thus, to specify the features of judicial proof, it is necessary to compare the content of evidentiary activities carried out within the framework of judicial processes that have a law-enforcement nature with the features of administrative control. It is concluded that the fact which is regarded as an event cannot function as a means of cognition. It cannot be collected, stored, and directly examined. One can appeal using realized facts (information). As a result, it is possible to hypothesize that the evidence is an image of rendered facts of objective reality. Therefore, to consider information about legal facts evidence, it must have a procedural form (written evidence, expert opinions, witness statements, etc.).