Standards of Proof in Civil and Commercial Proceedings: Prospects for the Institution to Develop in Russia

Nowadays there is a problem of the legal regulation sufficiency of the judicial discretion boundaries in the evidence evaluation process in Russian civil and commercial proceedings. In practice, courts seek to establish facts in a case with a high degree of certainty. Therefore, the existing procedure of the evidence evaluation based on the subjective internal conviction of judges has led to the intuitive formation of exorbitant requirements to the evidence persuasiveness. Russian courts demand the same number of convincing and unambiguous evidence in civil and commercial proceedings as in a criminal trial. Unfortunately, this leads to the inability of the plaintiffs to overcome the burden of proof imposed on them and the refusal of the courts to protect their violated rights due to the unproven claims. As a result, the effectiveness of justice is reduced. Doctrine and practice of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation suggest to resolve the problem through the reception of the standards of proof in the context of legislative convergence of the processes in common law and continental law countries. This study will attempt to study the legal nature of the procedures for evaluating evidence in Russia and the Anglo-American countries, to identify their interchangeable or complementary nature, and to analyze the practice of Russian courts in civil and commercial cases with standards of proof application. The study identifies problems associated with the application of standards of proof in civil and commercial proceedings, and outlines ways to solve them.