Organizational, Legal and Procedural Features of Bringing Civil Servants to Disciplinary Liability

The article examines the organizational, legal, and procedural features of bringing civil servants to disciplinary liability in the Russian Federation, taking into account international experience. It addresses the grounds for disciplinary liability, types of disciplinary sanctions, specifics of their application, and their legal consequences for civil servants. Particular attention is paid to the procedural mechanism for establishing guilt – namely, the procedure for conducting an internal investigation, the civil servant’s right to provide explanations, and the time limits for imposing sanctions, as well as to the principles of legality, justice, proportionality, and individualization of disciplinary measures. A comparative analysis is conducted between the domestic approach and US practice, including the use of flexible misconduct assessment mechanisms (the Douglas factors) and the individualization of sanction selection. The article analyzes challenges in law enforcement practice related to the implementation of disciplinary procedures within the civil service system. It substantiates the need to improve disciplinary mechanisms through the normative establishment of the proportionality criteria, unification of procedures under a single framework law, introduction of an intermediate disciplinary measure (a strict reprimand), and development of departmental methodological guidelines on imposing disciplinary sanctions.