Court fine as another measure of a criminal-legal nature in conditions of protocolary legal uncertainty

This author analyzes the legislative regulation of a court fine as a measure of a criminal-legal nature and the law enforcement practice emerging on its basis. It has been proved that the absence of a legislatively established minimum amount of a court fine, rules on determining the duration of the period for paying a court fine and on the procedure for calculating it, rules on taking into account the property status of a person who committed a crime, when deciding on exemption from criminal liability with the appointment of a court fine, leads to the huge variability in the approaches of the courts to solving the indicated issues, which does not allow the formation of a unified law enforcement throughout Russia. Based on the results of the research, it has been concluded that the lack of due formal clarity of the norms of the criminal law on a court fine leads to the infinity of judicial discretion, and, as a consequence, to the violation of the constitutional principle of equality of all before the law and the court. The author proposes options for eliminating the identified shortcomings at the legislative and legal explanatory levels.