The article gives a brief overview of historical approaches and contemporary views with respect of the problem of interrelation betwen morality and law. It is shown that, both in the contemporary domestic literature and in the public consciousness, the prevailing view is that morality, being wider and higher than the law, acts as its limit and demarcation. The author shows the historical conditioning of that point of view. The author suggests that we should apply the approach according to which morality and law, dealing with the same subject-the actions of living individuals and personally fixed relationships between people-become independent of each other, autonomous forms of oughtness. The conclusion is drawn that the law treats relations between people as a bilateral process and mediates them applying the universal norm and independent justice, while morality holds an individual guilty and responsible.

The article is devoted to methodological peculiarities of legal thought and juridical science in the New Time (about 1600-1850). The New Time is a turning point not only in the history of the whole world civilization, but also in the history of philosophical knowledge and positive sciences as well as in the history of methodology emerging and functioning at the interface of philosophy and science. Methodology is a philosophical discipline that establishes effective methods, approaches, methods of cognition and tools necessary for the implementation of scientific research, including the field of the juridical science. The main goal of methodology is to organize and regulate cognition as a purposeful process of obtaining and processing new and reliable scientific facts. Particular significance of the New Time for the development of methodology lies in the fact that it was at this historical stage that the fundamental principles of the methodological matrix of scientific knowledge were developed, since science then acquires the functions of a system and systematic production of knowledge on the basis of a comprehensive empirical study carried out in compliance with reality. The New Time gave impetus to the formation of scientific knowledge of a modern type that acquired an institutional character and industrial scale and became the most important non-economic factor in the industrial revolution in the West, opening the way for scientific and technological progress and industrial production of the Newest Times. The New Time was the period when, due to the theoretical efforts of thinkers and jurists, the general methodological basis that continues to exist at the present stage of its development was established. At the same time, the formation of separate branches of law was initiated: philosophy of law, law encyclopedias, a little later-the general theory of law, as well as the theoretical aspect of certain branches disciplines. In the context of methodology of jurisprudence, two opposing tendencies that competitively coexisted in the philosophical discourse of the New Time can be differentiated, namely: rationalistic and empirical approaches. A methodological matrix of jurisprudence that was influenced by both rationalistic and empirical epistemology is enriched by the use of many methods, some of which has been known since Antiquity, but have not been applied in the field of the juridical science. Thus, the article highlights a rather ambiguous problem of methodological foundations of the cognitive sphere of modern jurisprudence.

The article scrutinises the process of formation and evolution of legal understanding during various historical stages of state-legal development in Russia during the early (10th-13th centuries, Kieven Rus) and late (14th-16th centuries, the Moscow State) Middle Ages. Jurisprudence possesses its own peculiarities of concepts formation and their terminological determination understanding of which makes it easier to objectively ascertain the content of normative regulatory acts and political and legal doctrines. The article shows the changes that took place with the acceptance of Christianity by Russia in the 10th century (in 988) and assimilation of Orthodox religious philosophy, the doctrine of dogma, ritual rules of worship and the corresponding terminology. In this regard, significant changes took place in the very conceptual apparatus of legislators and thinkers, as well as in the consciousness of the entire Old Russian society. Under the Byzantine religious tradition, the term “law” denoted concepts of a high order: the Law of God, the laws of the Old and New Testaments, the laws of Jesus Christ, the laws of the Ecumenical Councils, etc. But at the same time, in Byzantine political practice the term “law” was also used in a generalized legal meaning, i.e. to refer to the laws of the emperors. Since in Rus, before the Christianity was adopted, the word “law” had been used for a long time to denoted specific rules of conduct for violation of which physical and material responsibility was envisaged, a certain wider and more specific meaning developed in its further Christian interpretation under the influence of which the term “law” expanded its content due to sacred motivation, but it did not lose its traditional legal value. As a result of gradually developing law-enforcement practice, the concept “law” of broader meaning (moral-religious) and the concept of narrower (legal) meaning coincided giving it a meaning combining both senses.

The article raises the problems of the legal nature of the actual detention and bringing a person to the investigative agency or to the investigator preceding his detention on suspicion of committing a crime in the order prescribed by Ch. 12 of the Criminal Procedure Code. A systematic analysis of doctrinal sources, provisions of domestic legislation, some normative legal acts of the states that emerged instead of the former Soviet Union, and the European Court of Human Rights jurisprudence allows us to conclude that neither factual detention nor bringing to the investigative agency or investigator can be recognized as objects of criminal procedural regulation because of heterogeneity of corresponding legal relations, as compared with “classical” public law relations that have been developing in the sphere of criminal justice. Moreover, neither factual detention nor bringing to the investigative agency or investigator can be recognized as elements of merely administrative law enforcement activities. The author comes to the conclusion that the factual detention of a potential suspect and his bringing to the investigative agency or investigator are of complex nature because they are based on the constitutional law provisions and on the inter-branch mechanism, based on the same constitutional law provisions, of restricting the individual’s right to freedom and personal integrity, including administrative, operational-search, penitentiary and other aspects. Dealing with actual detention and bringing to the investigative agency or investigator in the constitutional law and inter-branch contexts should result in the formation of a sole mechanism for the implementation of these powers in various forms of jurisdictional activity by various law enforcement agencies. At the same time, this will facilitate leveling and reconsideration of many problems of theory and practice of criminal justice maturing for years, namely: issues concerning the moment of factual detention, appointing a counsel for the detained person, the legal nature of so-called civil detention, etc.

In this article, the author analyzes the concept of “principles of law” in terms of the so-called substantive properties. The author distinguishes four such properties: objectivity, universalism, globality, efficiency. The author shows what these properties mean with respect of the concept of “principles of law,” and examines how the determination of the above properties contributes to the understanding the concept. On the basis of the analysis and taking into account the organic connection between the properties of the principles, it is concluded that the principles of law are objective, universal, global ideas concerning the most effective organization of the legal aspect of the social structure reflecting objective properties of people’s nature and objective patterns of social interaction.

The author’s attention is focused on the dialogue as the most important mechanism facilitating the formation of trust in politics. A detailed resort to modern social and political realities makes it possible to identify the reasons for the dynamics of trust depending on the socio-cultural environment, political processes and legal regulation. On the one hand, dialogue mechanisms of trust assume openness, creativity, dynamics, due to which trust becomes a “constructor” of the political and legal environment. This allows the dialogue to be a mobile construction that is adaptive to external risks. On the other hand, trust in the socio-political environment is determined by institutions and is impossible without following clear rules, norms, procedures. The article examines the factor of distrust that plays not only a destructive role, but also a positive role of “insuring” subjects of political and legal relations. “The right to distrust” is one of the elements of democracy, and “inevitability”of trust is manifested in the need to find compromises in a pluralistic environment of a democratic society. By singling out a homogeneous and heterogeneous trust environment, the author justifies the priority of the latter. At the same time, the democratic environment of trust presupposes the effects of “forced” trust, when it is formed under the conditions of limited choice. An indicator that shows trust/distrust on behalf of the authorities in relation to the civil society and vice versa is the electoral system.

The article considers the main types of responsibility of an insolvency practitioner for unfair performance of the duties imposed on him under the law and by the court. The author analyzes the current legislation and legal stances employed in the arbitration courts practice.

The article deals with an important form of administrative legal regulation of public relations - administrative procedures. The author analyzes the regulatory sources that regulate substantive and procedural aspects of administrative procedures. In particular, the Federal law of 2010 “Concerning the Organization of the Provision of State and Municipal Services” is considered. Case study of granting of quotas on extraction of the hunting resources and regulation of tariffs for energy resources makes it possible to show the development and enforcement of administrative regulations in business. The article proves that the uncertainty inherent in the Federal and regional legislation adversely affects the activities of law enforcers, the correct understanding of their duties and boundaries of authority. The decisions of the courts of the Russian Federation are given as examples of the challenged regulatory acts.

The subject of the study is the norms of anti-corruption legislation of the Russian Federation, administrative ordinances and ministerial regulatory acts, as well as by-laws and provisions of codes of ethics that reinforce anti-corruption standards of conduct for employees of educational institutions of higher education. The article discusses the emerging trends shaping anti-corruption standards of conduct in the field of education. The author considers in detail the methods of fixing such basic anti-corruption standards of conduct as the duty to notify the fact of inducement to commit corruption offenses, the duty to take measures for the prevention and settlement of conflict of interests, the ban on receipt of gifts in connection with official duties. The author has used the dialectical method of cognition, systematic and structural, formal logical and other methods of scientific cognition. The conducted study makes it possible to conclude that unified anti-corruption standards of conduct for employees of educational organizations are yet to be fixed. Anti-corruption standards of behavior are enshrined in the administrative ordinances and ministerial acts of the Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the Russian Federation only to a narrow circle of persons carrying out managerial functions in educational organizations. In respect of other categories of employees of the educational organizations, anti-corruption obligations, prohibitions, restrictions, and recommendations are left to the discretion of the educational organization in the respective local regulations and codes of ethics. Among the negative trends in the formation of anti-corruption standards of behavior in educational organizations of higher education, the author mentions the lack of a unified approach to strengthening anti-corruption obligations, prohibitions and restrictions. The difference and inconsistency of forms of presentation of anticorruption standards of conduct, ways of consolidation (local regulations or code of ethics), as well as independent selection of lists of such standards of conduct do not contribute to the formation of a single, clear and certain legal framework to ensure effective prevention of corruption.

A single EU constitutional legal doctrine of secession is absent, although there are some general approaches to reasoning in research and in decisions of the constitutional courts. EU law, according to experts, does not allow, but does not expressly prohibit secession. The national constitutions of the EU Member States do not contain provisions expressly forbidding or allowing secession. National constitutional law doctrine is based on the peculiarities of the wording of the constitutional provisions that supporters and opponents of secession interpret in different ways. Since written constitutions of the EU Member States are silent on the issues of secession and the constitutional control bodies tend to interpret this as an absolute prohibition of secession, in case of conflicts this creates a tense situation. The unwritten and flexible UK Constitution in this situation tends to be more suitable for tackling this complex problem. The science of constitutional law is in search of a combination of different theories and balance of the fundamental principles of a modern democratic constitutional state. These searches are currently determined to a large extent by the selection of priority values: the preference for the principle of unity, integrity and the principle of sovereignty entail the denial of the right to secession; the focus on human and peoples’ rights forces us to look closer at secession as one of the ways to exercise these rights. According to the author, the doctrine of secession should be developed on the crossroads of international and national constitutional law. The search for modern doctrine on the issues of secession is in the initial stage.

The article explains the importance of regular and meaningful moral and philosophical (ethical) expertise of law for the society and the state . It is shown that the law itself requires analytical critical work, so that it becomes a serious aid for the morality The author substantiates the thesis that the method of knowledge and activities should not be regardered too narrowly: we should talk about some more general philosophical, ethical guidelines, a certain paradigm of thought and action, aimed at cultivating the human in man. The relevance of teaching ethics, especially with regard to higher education, providing training for the proper performance of professional duties is stated.