Abuse of Procedural Rights in the Context of Digital Transformation of Justice (the Case of the Russian Federation)

Recently, Russian state courts have actively turned to the construction of abuse of rights, referring to the legislative requirement for the exercise of procedural rights in good faith. The purpose of this article is to test the hypothesis that the concept of e-justice, by significantly expanding the range of procedural opportunities of the parties to a case, can act as a catalyst for the emergence of new mechanisms of abuse of process, including contributing to the modification of the classical forms of procedural misconduct. In this work, a comprehensive general theoretical and practical study of the impact of digitalization on the abuse of procedural rights was carried out. The study used several methods of scientific research: legalistic, technical, dialectical, logical, systemic-legal, comparative law, legal interpretation method. In the course of the analysis, the need for the judiciary system to expand the forms of electronic interaction between parties to a case and the court, as well as courts with each other, was confirmed. The author has established a cause and effect relationship that mediates the emergence of new mechanisms of procedural abuse due to the introduction of new digital tools in the civil process, and also structured the main directions of the digital development of the Russian civil process. In general, the analysis showed that digital technologies have great potential, opening access to justice to an increasing number of interested and in need of people. The digitalization process cannot be estimated only as a source for new procedural risks and abuses. Informatization also serves as a tool for preventing procedural abuses through audio and video recording of court sessions, which does not make it “pure evil”.