Annotation

This article examines the legal nature and contemporary challenges of special proceedings in Russian civil procedure. It analyzes the development of legislation on special proceedings, identifying consistent features: a close connection with substantive law, the prevalence of specialized subject-matter procedural rules, the lack of uniform, general provisions for similar categories of cases, and the redistribution of jurisdiction between the court and other bodies. The paper demonstrates that many problems and contradictions have historical roots and have migrated into modern legislation from the pre-revolutionary period. It is noted that the mechanical application of the rules of claim procedure to special proceedings, based on the formal criterion of the absence of a dispute over law, does not reflect their essence and creates excessive freedom for the applicant while simultaneously limiting the court's authority to establish objective truth.