Indirect and Irrefutable Presumptions: Some Musings to Old Discussions

Relevance. Despite the serious scientific tradition of studying legal presumptions, a number of issues related to them still cause serious discussions in the works of specialists.
The purpose of the article is to clarify the author's position on two controversial issues concerning indirect and irrefutable presumptions, which are usually considered as unrelated problems.
Objectives: to reveal the concepts of presumption, indirect presumption and irrefutable presumption; to illustrate them with examples from the latest legislation.
Metodology. The research methodology includes a classic set of general scientific and special legal methods. Both debatable terms in the work are considered on the basis of a unified approach to the concept of legal presumption as a legal assumption, i.e. a normatively fixed legally rebuttable statement.
Results. As a result of the study, it is concluded that this approach does not contradict the existence of indirect presumptions, but casts doubt on the assertion of the existence of irrefutable presumptions.
Conclusion. A legal presumption includes two elements: a general rule and the statutory possibility of rebutting it. The classification of a presumption as direct or indirect depends on how clearly and compactly both of its elements are formulated in the law. Moreover, in both cases we are talking about rebuttable presumptions. The term "irrefutable presumption" is used to describe not a peculiar mechanism of action of a legal norm, but the mechanism of its formation. It is not addressed to the law enforcement officer as a guide to action, but describes the motives that prompted the legislator to fix this or that content in the legal norm. The concept of "irrefutable presumption" has a right to exist due to a long tradition and popularity of its use in legal discourse. In this case, the term "presumption" is used in a broad sense (as an assumption implied or enshrined in a legal norm) and encompasses two independent types of legal techniques: legal presumptions and legal fictions. presumption "and" legal fiction "are synonymous or simply deny legal fictions the right to exist.

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