The relationship between cassation and supervisory proceedings in the criminal process of the Russian Federation

The subject of the research is the relationship between cassational and supervisory proceedings in the criminal process of the Russian Federation, as well as their normative fixation, functional role, and actual demand in the system of stages for reviewing judicial decisions. Special attention is given to how these institutions implement the constitutional right to judicial protection, ensure the legality and fairness of justice, and prevent judicial errors. The research covers both the historical and legal evolution of the domestic model of cassational and supervisory appeals, as well as contemporary discussions related to their autonomy and the rationality of their existence. Furthermore, the analysis includes foreign approaches to organizing judicial control, which allows for a comparison and assessment of the possibility of implementing certain elements of foreign experience into Russian practice. The methodological framework of the study includes comparative legal, historical legal, systemic, formal legal, and statistical methods, which have allowed tracing the evolution of cassational and supervisory proceedings, comparing them with foreign models, analyzing legislation, judicial practices, and statistics of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation. The scientific novelty of the research is expressed in a comprehensive understanding of the current relationship between cassational and supervisory proceedings in the criminal process of the Russian Federation. Unlike most existing works, which focus on normative differences between these stages, this article emphasizes their actual demand and real role in judicial practice. For the first time, based on the analysis of the statistics from the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation, it is argued that supervision has lost the signs of substantive autonomy and duplicates the cassational mechanism. It is shown that its preservation hinders the formation of a rational model of judicial control, creates excessive procedural levels, and does not ensure a qualitatively new level of rights protection. A separate aspect of novelty is the comparison of the Russian model with foreign approaches, which has previously been considered only fragmentarily in the scientific literature. Such analysis has revealed the advantages of a three-tier system for reviewing judicial decisions – appeal, cassation, final decision. On this basis, a proposal for legislative reform aimed at abandoning supervision and strengthening cassation as a key institution for correcting judicial errors and ensuring the unity of judicial practice is justified.