Voronin S.A. Improvement of modern forensic enquiry methods 

Abstract: The research subject includes the modern methods of forensic enquiry. The research object is forensic enquiry. The author considers such aspects as the modern methodology of expert studies and the differentiation of the levels of expert knowledge. The author points out the ways to solve methodological problems connected with a diversity of forensic expertise, taking into account that each expertise is a part of a corresponding science, and the forensic expertise classes are defined on the base of the sciences differentiation. The paper differentiates the levels of methodology of forensic expertise: the philosophical, including the general principles of cognition and the categorial structure; the general scientific principles and forms of study, formal theories of methodology, and the scientific methodology as a set of methods, approaches and search procedures applied in criminalistics; the last level of methodology includes the very methods and techniques of study including the set of procedures ensuring the comparability and validity of empiric materials, their processing and registering in the common knowledge. The research methodology is based on the doctrinal sources of the Soviet and the modern periods from the position of the general methodology of the theory of law and criminalistics. The author reveals the analogy with general scientific approaches with the following sequence: philosophical methodology, methods and techniques of expertise. The paper contains the author’s vision of the methodology of forensic expertise as a scientific doctrine of methods, instruments, structure and logical organization of expertise. The novelty of the study lies in the ranking of subject methods of forensic expertise which lie on another specific level of methodological knowledge – the level of research methods and techniques. The paper contains the comparison of the system of scientific methods of forensic expertise. 

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