Symbols of judicial power and rituals of justice: Their prospects in the context of digitalization

Introduction. Digitalization, accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic, has significantly influenced the development of public power and law, triggering the transformation of many state-legal institutions, processes, and legal relations. The judicial system was no exception: it was one of the first to begin to modernize when, in the realities of covid lockdown, the administration of justice switched to a remote format. Problem statement. The implementation of justice in the remote format revealed a number of diverse organizational problems (for example, unequal technical capabilities and weak digital skills of participants in the process, low information and communication culture of many of them, etc.) and procedural issues, related, in particular, to the change in the procedural form, which began to be simplified and optimized, and also led to the abuse of the ritual form and its non-compliance. Theoretical analysis. The term “symbol” has many meanings, and in every science it has its own meaning. Symbolism has always been inherent in law, and the symbols of justice are among the most recognizable in the world. The symbols of justice are diverse and ambiguous. The actions of the court, which are given special legal significance and which are performed in a particularly solemn and official atmosphere, have symbolic significance. They should be called rituals of justice, manifested in a special ritual form. Empirical analysis. The practical significance of symbolic rituals of justice relies on the fact that they have the meaning of a legal fact and a strictly defined form of manifestation, i.e. they are part of the procedural form. As the practice of recent years has shown, the procedural form, when conducting a trial in the remote format, is not only simplified, but also often ignored by the participants in the process. In our opinion, external factors and circumstances contribute to this: for example, the use of web communication, along with video conferencing, as well as the actual rejection of certain principles of justice. Results. In the context of digitalization, under the influence of which the modernization of the Russian judicial system is being accelerated, two trends have emerged. On the one hand, the introduction of digital technologies is aimed at expanding access to justice, efficiency and convenience of its implementation and, accordingly, turning it into a high-tech public service accessible to the subject from anywhere, wherever he or she is. On the other hand, technologization entails a significant simplification of the procedural form, generates competition of the principles of justice, calls into question the possibility of carrying out a number of symbolic actions expressed in a ritual form.