Constitutional Discussion of Justice in the Context of Respecting the Defendants’ Rights

Abstract

The relevance of the study is determined by the need for clear mechanisms in order to exercise of the defendants’ rights in social reality. The aim of the study is to determine the effectiveness of the systems for observing the defendants’ constitutional rights in criminal proceedings in Germany, France, Italy, the USA, and Japan. The study applied a comprehensive methodological approach to achieve the goal. The method of formal logic was used for a systematic study of the provisions of the constitutions of Germany, France, Italy, the USA and Japan regarding the protection of the rights of the accused. Through the application of the comparative law method, a comparison of the systems of guaranteeing the rights of the defendants in the indicated states was carried out, which made it possible to identify common trends and specific national differences in the mechanisms of their implementation. The method of legal hermeneutics made it possible to take into account the complex nature of the interaction of the individual, society and the state in the field of criminal justice when interpreting legal norms. The results of the study were substantiated position that the analysed provisions in the constitutions of Germany, France, Italy, Japan, and the USA have significant differences. At the same time, it can be recognized that the constitutions of these countries contain common and important provisions on the defendants’ rights and freedoms. The scientific novelty of the study lies in the comprehensive comparative analysis of the mechanisms for implementing the constitutional rights of the accused within different legal families, which allowed us to identify the correlation between national legal traditions and the effectiveness of judicial protection in modern conditions. Unlike traditional approaches, the paper argues for the role of criminal justice not simply as a tool of protection, but as a dynamic system that requires constant adaptation to the challenges of digitalization and harmonization with international standards. It is proven that the effectiveness of constitutional guarantees directly depends on the balance between state coercion and individual freedom in the context of the development of the global legal space. The academic novelty of this study lies in its shift from a purely descriptive analysis of constitutional norms to a functional assessment of how these rights are exercised in social reality. Unlike previous research that focuses on isolated jurisdictions, this work provides a synthesized typology of defendants’ rights, categorizing them by the source of law, the subject of execution, and the specific stage of the trial process. Further research may focus on studying the forms of exercising the defendants’ rights.