Justice as an object of criminal law protection

The article presents and analyzes various definitions of justice, considers its forms, principles of implementation on the territory of the Russian state, and identifies the need for its criminal protection. It is noted that recently there has been a steady trend towards an increase in crimes against justice, but despite this fact, official statistics reflect only a small part of them. The author attempts not only to consider the existing positions of scientists regarding the object of criminal and legal protection of Chapter 31 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, but also to formulate his author's position in this part. The novelty of the study is due to the complex (conceptual) approach to justice as an object of legal protection and the proposals developed on its basis to improve the Russian criminal law in this area. It is stated that at present, the Russian legislator does not quite correctly formulate the object of criminal legal protection, because it does not fully cover the actual content of the object of protection, which is present in Chapter 31 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation. The author comes to the conclusion that in this case it would be more correct to speak not about justice as an activity, but about its interests as an object of criminal legal protection.