Vol 3, No 12 (2019)

Legal priorities are considered in the framework of the implementation of economic policy of modern Russia, due to the fact that this category has not only legal, but also political significance and is simultaneously aimed at political and legal results. We substantiate the position that legal priorities are especially significant in state policy and, above all, in economic policy, as they establish the development directions of the Russian economy and, above all, in the framework of innovation. The transition of Russia to digital technologies determines the development and formulation of legal priorities, which causes the intensification of statutory conditions creation to ensure this transition. We highlight the disadvantages in the legal support of the digital economy in Russia, namely: the minimum requirements for the digitalization process were not established, additional mechanisms that stimulate the introduction of digital technologies by market participants were not created, etc. We analyze the problem of the interdependence of states from each other in the context of the development of globalization and digital economy, which actualizes the value of state sovereignty. We emphasize that worldview change affects the understanding of state sovereignty and attitude towards it, but at the same time state sovereignty has absolute advantages and should not be limited by anyone. Modernization of the understanding of state sovereignty and attitude towards it actualizes the analysis of the state’s national interests, including national economic security, the well-being of population, the favorable dynamics of trade with specific partners, and the formation of a legal environment for entrepreneurship.

This work is the first in a series of materials devoted to the forms of manifestation of private and public initiative in the construction law of Russia during the empire and the Soviet period. We center on the phenomenon of “private initiative” as a factor in city formation and construction law. The strength of this factor is illustrated by separate plots of the city-planning policy of the Russian Empire and local lore historical material. We actualize the problem of representation forms of private initiative and public inquiries. Factors of the construction law formation, besides objectively existing legislative activity of the state and the rule-making activities of local authorities, were the proposals of the professional community. We analyze the forms of such proposals (appeals) to the authorities in the context of the active formation of civic consciousness of the intellectual professional elite of Russia concerning city-planning activities and city-planning regulation. Private initiative is understood as a psychological, normative-generating base of social relations, which are the basis for the current complex of city-planning activity regulators. We draw conclusion about the representation of private public inquiries for a comfortable urban living environment in the form of proposals by the professional community to the state, which were formulated imperatively. We draw conclusion about the specific applied nature of legislative proposals in the field of city-planning regulation, which were generated by technical experts and territorial representatives.

In this work, we analyze the constitutional and legal imperatives of social policy that determine the sustainable state of demographic security of the Republic of Belarus, and also we establish the place of citizens legal awareness in the field of social and security relations. We make a number of conclusions: on the predominantly successful implementation of measures to improve social legislation (at the same time, certain areas were noted in which the predicted results were not achieved); the sufficiency of constitutional legal imperatives of social policy; on increasing the degree of independence of citizens and the level of their legal awareness in social and security relations. We note that the symbiosis of social and economic constitutional and legal imperatives reflected in the text of the current Basic Law of the Republic of Belarus corresponds to the spirit of the times. We also state that at present, refracting through the prism of dynamically developing economic relations, the sphere of social policy is filled with new meaning and new forms involving citizens, as recipients of these social benefits and values, in the process of implementing guaranteed constitutional and legal imperatives. In addition, we note that state paternalism, as a model of social protection, has not exhausted its capabilities even in the conditions of modern, dynamically developing social and economic relations.

We consider the importance of advocateship in the process of protecting human rights and freedoms, the interests of organizations, society and the state. We indicate the grounds and circumstances of the provision by lawyers of qualified legal assistance to certain categories of citizens, including on a non-refundable basis. We reveal the importance of the professional and business qualities of a lawyer, as a representative of the lawyer community, in providing legal assistance. We pay attention to the high moral, ethical and legal nature of the lawyers activities, in particular, the moral requirements for the lawyer personality; activity in defending the interests of the grantor (client); legal guarantees for the independence of a lawyer and others. Advocateship, as an institution that does not belong to state power, but to civil society, which has such characteristics as autonomy, independence, corporatism, self-government, has a significant role in the law enforcement activity of the state. Envisage to increase the role of the lawyer community in advocacy, to increase the qualifications of lawyer personnel, expand the rights of lawyers in providing legal assistance, and significantly improve the information and technical base. A number of legislative transformations to increase the effective functioning of the lawyer community, enhancing the professional advocateship independence of the Russian Federation, can become productive only when the state ensures the trust of citizens on the part of the lawyer community, it is also necessary to end impunity in the advocacy sphere, and increase the level of legal order and legality, to strengthen the supervision quality of the rights and freedoms of man and citizen observance institution.

We analyze the legislation and practice of public control implementation of the work of institutions and authorities that conduct sentences. We consider the basic principles and directions of the Public Monitoring Commissions (PMC) activities, we list the problem aspects of the administrations interaction of corrections facilities (CF), mass media and public members. In addition, we study the conceptual foundations of the penal system (PS), measures of legal, organizational, informational, social and economic nature aimed at transparency and improving the conditions of serving a sentence. We ascertain that in practice there are cases in which misunderstanding and ignorance of the criminal, criminal procedural and correctional law legislation by members of the PMC, their inability to give an objective legal assessment of the behavior and actions of a particular subject (remand prisoner, convicted) and officials of administrations of the Federal Penitentiary Service (FPS of Russia) often creates prerequisites for destabilizing the work of institutions of forced detention (FD) and violating the order of serving sentences. In addition, we note that there are other unresolved tasks with the procedure for protecting the rights of convicted prisoners. Thus, we points out that to date, the issues of modernization and optimization of the security system of the CF, strengthening the material base, the formation of modern information and telecommunication infrastructures, ensuring the necessary level of social protection of the PMC employees, introducing modern technologies and technical means into practice of conduct of sentences and many others have remained unresolved.

We analyze the concepts of public and national domain. We pay special attention to determining the public domain place in the system of intellectual property. We formulate the main approaches to the results of human intellectual work in order to determine the relevance of works of science, literature, art to the public domain. We study the tools for identifying objects of the national domain in the public domain. It is proved that a proprietary approach to intellectual property right fits into the concept of national domain. We define an exception – the identification of the creator’s right to a specific intellectual result should be slightly limited in time or should not occur at all. We note that the concept of national domain took a lot from the proprietary concept, while it does not apply to individuals, but applies to the whole people. We substantiate the position that the proprietary approach can be applied in the national domain theory only to the extent that it does not limit the title of a nation (people) in relation to certain objects of intellectual right. We identify weaknesses and strengths of intellectual property norms implementation in other branches of legislation, as well as civil and legal relations. At the same time, we pay special attention to the national domain institution, taking into account its comparative characteristics with the public domain and the results of the intellectual work of the most talented members of society.

The relevance of the study lies in the fact that the reform of the procedural legislation in line with expanding the possibilities of parties reconciliation at all stages of the civil and arbitration process, including through mediation, has generated a number of scientific and practical problems, one of which is the assessment of the imperativeness of the rules of procedural law on fulfillment by a court or arbitration tribunal of an obligation to facilitate parties reconciliation. The purpose of the study is to evaluate the arguments both in favor of the fact that the court’s failure to fulfill the obligation to cooperate in reconciling the parties should serve as the basis for the annulment of the judicial act, and in favor of the fact that this violation does not affect the decision correctness on the merits of the dispute. We draw conclusion that, in certain circumstances, a provisions violation on conciliation may constitute a reason for the decision annulment (for example, in cases where the court of the verification instance, in order to make up for the omissions of the court of first instance, leads the parties to reconciliation, although annulment with the termination of the proceedings in this case is objective consequence of achieving the result of conciliation procedures); in other cases, the discovery of the fact that the potential of conciliation procedures has not been used, with the revealed possibility of parties conciliation, may serve as the basis for making a special ruling to the court of first instance. But in any case, the court’s failure to reconcile the parties would constitute a violation of civil procedural law, which should not be left without any reaction from the courts of verification instances.

We draw attention to the need of improving the current Code of Administrative Offences of the Russian Federation in order to ensure the unity and systematic approach of legal regulation of administrative and tort liability, improving the procedure for consideration of cases of administrative offences. We propose to reduce the age of bringing to administrative responsibility for committing a number of administrative offenses, namely – to set the age limit for bringing a person to administrative responsibility upon reaching 14 years. We consider it appropriate to count the peculiarities of the age of the minor, namely, in the case of determining the age of bringing to administrative responsibility since the age of 14 years, should provide specific procedures for bringing to the responsibility of these individuals: establishment of responsibility only on certain categories of cases the cases against these persons by the court with mandatory participation of a lawyer and legal representative. It is offered to establish administrative responsibility for attempt on commission of an administrative offense and on complicity in its commission, and also to establish cases of obligatory participation of the defender in proceedings on administrative offenses and rendering free legal support.

The study is devoted to the consideration of the civil procedural legislation reform. The review notes the significance and consequences of two federal laws: Federal Law of November 28, 2018 no. 451-FZ “On Amending Certain Legislative Acts of the Russian Federation” and Federal Law of December 9, 2010 no. 353-FZ “On Amending to the Civil Procedure Code of the Russian Federation”. The study contains two points of view on the content of the changes. The first point of view is presented by T.T. Aliev and A.O. Yatsenko. We point to one of the most important changes in the procedural legislation – a change in the representation institution in court. We propose the creation of a register of persons who have the right to be representatives in court. We also consider the creation of appeal and cassation courts of general jurisdiction. On this aspect of civil procedure reform, special attention is paid in the second point of view presented by A.D. Zolotuhin, who reveals not only the essence of changes, but also notes the historical background, as well as the theoretical characteristics of the changes. Both approaches to the review of the past reform emphasize that the procedural legislation reform meets current needs, but requires careful and consistent implementation.

We present the review of the All-Russian scientific and practical conference with international participation “Current problems of agricultural law” held on October 16–19, 2019 with the support of the Russian Foundation for Basic Research (Project no. 19-01-20101). The conference program included the work of the plenary session, seven sections: “General issues of agricultural law”, “State regulation of the agricultural sector”, “Problems of legal support of organic production, selection and seed production, nursery farming”, “Problems of legal support of crop production and animal breeding”, “Relationship of agricultural and land law”, “Relationship of agricultural and environmental law”, “School of young scientists”. At the same time with the conference, refresher courses “Agricultural, land and environmental law” were organized. The conference was attended by researchers, research workers, lecturers of educational institutions, specialists in the field of agricultural and other branches of law, representatives of state authorities, experts in the field of agriculture. Participants of the conference during numerous debates discussed the situation in the regulatory legal framework for the activities of the agroindustrial complex of the Russian Federation and recognized the need to strengthen coordination of work in this area, the starting point of which was the past conference, and also came to the conclusions set forth in the Decision.