The stage of preparation of materials for the court hearing: scholars’ positions on the substantive nature

The relevance of the study is due to the lack of a clear understanding of the scope of the court’s procedural powers when a previously investigated criminal case is received from the prosecutor. This statement is confirmed by the frequent adjustment of the legal framework of the stage; the legal positions of the Constitutional and Supreme Courts of the Russian Federation with subsequent clarifications of the original versions; the lack of uniformity of the procedural control actions of the court when working with the materials of the criminal case In this regard, this article is aimed at identifying or disclosing the essence of the stage of preparing materials for a court session, the list of tasks solved by the court when reviewing the materials of a criminal case, in general, the functional orientation of the stage. To obtain sufficiently complete and maximally reliable results, an integrated approach was used using methodological scientific tools. The article presents various positions of specialists on the appointment of the stage, reveals the list of tasks solved by the court at this stage, and most accurately defines the functional components of the court’s procedural activity at this stage. Based on the results of the study, the author’s position on the essence of the issues considered is formulated.