Extradition: Issues of the Categorical Apparatus

The issue of extradition of criminals remains one of the most complex in international crime-fighting practices, as it touches upon questions of state sovereignty. The peculiarities of the extradition procedure create many difficulties and take a considerable amount of time, due to the intertwining interests of several states and their various agencies. Debates in the theory of criminal law continue on almost all legal aspects of the institution of extradition, starting from the definition of its legal nature and legal sources to questions regarding the advisability of preparing a unified national legal act dedicated to this issue. The resolution of these questions seems complicated by the fact that doctrine has yet to establish a clear position on which branch of law – international, international criminal, international criminal procedural, criminal, or criminal procedural – extradition belongs to. All this leads to a certain isolation of research. In preparing this study, the author employed methods such as formal-legal, historical, comparative, as well as methods of analysis, induction, and deduction. The terms used in extradition practice serve as a name for a strictly defined concept of mutual legal assistance provided by states in the fight against crime. In this regard, there are neither factual nor legal grounds to consider the terms "extradition," "surrender of criminals," and "transfer of criminals" synonymous, as each reflects a specific socio-legal phenomenon regulated by the norms of international and national law. Secondly, extradition, surrender, and transfer of criminals to the requesting state differ both in the scope of the concept they reflect and in their relationship to one another. The first is general, while the other two represent a singular concept; in extradition practice, the latter reflect one of the methods of implementing extradition. Characterizing extradition as the removal of a foreign citizen from the territory of the Russian Federation does not correspond to its legal nature. Thirdly, recognizing extradition as an institution of criminal procedural law characterizes not a terminological, but an essential error that distorts its legal nature.