GalynaYUROVSKA, 

Judge of the Supreme Specialized Court of Ukraine for Civil and Criminal Cases, Candidate of Law Sciences

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OleksiiHUSIEV, 

student of the 2nd year of study of the Master's degree at the Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv

THE LEGAL NATURE OF EVIDENCE IN CIVIL PROCEDURE

The article is devoted to definition of the concept of evidence in civil proceedings and disclosure of the content of its legal nature. It is considered that the concept of evidence is one of the fundamental categories of civil procedure. In professional legal literature there are expressed diverse views on the understanding of the concept of evidence, as well as its legal definition. However, most of them have a uniform approach to structure of the concept of evidence, not including the latest achievements of proof theory of civil procedure law.

The authors point out that in the absence of a fully-appropriate and meaningful legal definition of the concept of evidence a variety of opinions is expressed on understanding of its legal nature and structure. Generalized, the article describes the following basic approaches to understanding of the legal nature of evidence: 1) evidences are the facts; 2) evidence is information; 3) evidence is actual data; 4) evidence is information about facts; 5) evidence is a combination of actual data and its procedural forms; 6) evidences are signs. Analysis of the above approaches may lead to the conclusion that the second, third and fourth approaches express the same concept of understanding of the nature of evidence, using different lexical categories. It is concluded that such approaches shows the richness of the language, the possibility of expressing the same concept using different words, but significant conceptual differences in these approaches may not be traced.

The authors suggest that nowadays the most precise view on the structure of evidence, which reflects objective reality, is the view that recognizes existence of two constituent elements in the concept of evidence - content and form. However, in order to standardize legal terminology and disclose the substantive and procedural legal nature of evidence it appears that the most appropriate is the structural approach to understanding of the concept of evidence. The general idea of it is to ensure that the concept of evidence in civil procedure consists of three elements, but not two: 1) information about the facts and circumstances; 2) legal sources of evidence, and 3) procedural form of evidence.

The general conclusion of the article offers to understand an evidence in civil procedure as information about the facts and/or circumstances under which a court concludes the presence or absence of the facts and circumstances justifying the claims and/or objections of persons, involved in the case, and other circumstances, relevant to the consideration and resolution of the case, collected in compliance with the procedural form of evidence with the help of provided by the law sources of evidence.

Keywords: civil litigation, theory of proof, evidence, actual facts, information about facts and circumstances, sources of evidence, procedural form of evidence.

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