The Constitutional Principle of Equality before the Courts: Substantive and Procedural Aspects

The article considers the specificity of the Russian Federation Constitution enshrined the principle of equality before the courts in relation to the adversarial principle. The author substantiates the idea that this principle has two aspects, expressing its essence: the substantive and procedural. In the material sense, it represents a concretization of the constitutional principle of equality and is largely associated with the provision of formal or de jure equality. Procedural aspects include the provision of real competition in the process, which in turn requires a «leveling» of the actual procedural status of the parties.