In modern private international law, the principle of the closest connection involves not only the identification of the prevailing territorial connection, but also the consideration of substantive factors (protection of a weaker party, preferability to keep the transaction valid, etc.). The paper substantiates the thesis that, being initially based on the territorial localization of the relationship, the analyzed principle in the course of its development was enhanced with the achievements of others doctrinal approaches to the resolution of the conflict-of-law issue, including the concept of “governmental” or “state” interest developed by American legal scholar Brainerd Currie. A genius breakthrough suggested by B. Currie is examined as an attempt to overcome the mechanical approach of conflict-of-law rules, expand the subject matter field of assessment at the stage of resolving the conflict-o-law issue and, ultimately, evaluate the substantive law result of this decision within the framework of understanding law as a tool for the protection of an individual by the state. Nevertheless, substantive law factors, contrary to one of the main tenets of B. Currie’s teaching, do not replace traditional conflict-of-laws rules at all. To the extent that the conflict-of-law regulation mechanism balances predictability and flexibility of decisions, it complements the search for territorial connection with substantive law considerations. The research makes it possible to conclude that the principle of the closest connection in private international law of the Russian Federation, in the context of global trends in the development of approaches to the resolution of conflict-of-law issues, is complex in nature, as indicated by the explanation of the Plenum of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation that “when determining the closest connection, the court,” first, establishes ”the prevailing territorial connection” and, second, “may take into account the application of the law of which country will best realize the universally recognized principles of civil law and of its institutions.” As a consequence, it is the combination of territorial and substantive law components in the content of the principle of the closest connection that provides an appropriate balance between predictability and flexibility of the modern mechanism of conflict-of-law regulation.

The paper examines issues related to unscrupulous behavior of the railways, which unthoroughly benefit at the expense of other participants of the obligations for the carriage of goods. The paper considered cases where the railways use legally valid facts (transactions) as imaginary grounds for obtaining property (money) from freight and cargo owners and encourage them to provide the undue. It is proposed to qualify such a conduct of the railways as an abuse of the right committed for the purpose of unjustified enrichment. Based on the analysis of complex contractual relations (contracts on carriage organization, contracts in the form of submission and acceptance of an application for the carriage of goods, contracts of carriage of goods, etc.) arising between the participants of legal relations concerning the carriage of goods (shippers, consignees, owners of infrastructure and carriers), the author has identified conditions that are conducive to receiving unjustified enrichment by the railways, namely: combining different legal statuses by the railways (carrier, owner of infrastructure, agent of a third party, etc.), removal from the railways of the burden of performing obligations and risks of liability for the failure to perform obligations, the position of a weaker party assigned to the railways’ contractual counterparties. According to the author, in order to prevent references to legal facts as grounds for enrichment, the economic purpose of the legal relationship must be recognized as an appropriate ground. It is noted that such an economic goal is one for the goals pursued by the whole system of legal relations for the carriage of goods and that its violation deprives the railways of the right to demand execution under the transaction, since making this claim must be considered as an abuse of the right. It is argued that the contractual counterparty of the railways, aware of the absence of grounds for granting property on its part, does not commit a legal error, as soon is it is a weaker party to the contract.

A common practice of imposing various prohibitions and rules in the constituent entities of the Russian Federation, owing to the need to solve acute social problems and achieve constitutionally significant goals, draws attention to the problem of restricting by the law of the constituent entity of the Russian Federation fundamental rights and freedoms of the man and citizen. Using the regulation of retail sale of non-alcoholic toning drinks as a case-study, the paper discusses the relevant legislative work, court practice, conditions and content of imposed restrictions. The laws of the constituent entities of the Russian Federation provide for prohibitions imposed on the sale of non-alcoholic tonic drinks to minors, retail trade in educational and medical organizations, as well as in places holding activities with the participation of young people and the consumption of such drinks by minors in public places. Attempts have been made to adopt a federal law with similar content, but taking into account the negative attitude of the Government of the Russian Federation and arguments concerning the absence of unambiguous scientific data with regard to the harm caused by ”energy” drinks, the State Duma rejected four draft laws. The regional laws’ analysis is carried out in the context of delineation of jurisdictions and powers between federal bodies of state power, sectoral legislative regulation and provisions consolidated in Part 3 Article 55 of the Constitution of the Russian Federation. Restrictions on the sale of “energy” drinks are considered within the framework of the content of the legislation regulating the protection of rights of the child, civil legislation and other legal acts, as well as legal stances of the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation. The paper has revealed uncertainty in the interpretation of the constitutional provision restricting human rights and freedoms by the federal law, which leads to contradictions in court practice.

The paper is devoted to the examination of the Russian system of public power in the context of the constitutional reform. The aim of the study is to carry out a comprehensive theoretical and legal analysis of the current state of consolidation of the public power system in Russia under constitutional law. The author has examined the regulatory legal acts that mediate the implementation of the constitutional reform in Russia; doctrinal sources and significant foreign experience relevant to the subject matter of the study. Methodologically, the study is based on general philosophical, general scientific, private scientific, special scientific methods. The paper defines the fundamental properties of the system of public power enshrined in the Constitution of the Russian Federation with due regard to such parameters as the peculiarities of the construction of federal relations as the fundamental functions and powers of public authorities allocated vertically, the state of the system of separation of powers in the context of checks and balances, the level of legal protection and autonomy of local authorities. The author has determined that the constitutional reform regarding the consolidation of the system of public power has encouraged development and strengthening of the principle of subsidiarity when differentiating jurisdictions and powers in relations between the state authorities of the Russian Federation and its constituent entities; clarification of the spatial limit of the governmental rule of the Federation by means of constitutional legitimation of Federal Territories; creation of the basis for overcoming the “conflict of competences (jurisdictions)” between state and municipal levels of power in order to ensure the constitutional law balance between the branches of state power at the federal level to prevent the development of non-systemic conflicts in the system of checks and balances and the emergence of constitutional crises of power. A suggested system of public power retains the necessary discretionary mechanisms to adjust the mechanism of its individual elements in order to achieve a balance between public functions, powers and tasks to be solved.

The rational use of natural resources in land law is understood as the increase in the ecological efficiency of the use of natural resources, including the quality improvement. the paper identifies the types of public relations concerning the rational use of natural resources in land law: 1) improvement of the state of the natural environment and the ecological situation in general; 2) improvement of the quality of land as a separate natural resource and a natural object; 3) land reclamation; 4) land restoration; 5) additional reproduction of land fertility; 6) other relationships aimed at improving the sustainability of environmental systems of which land is a part. On the example of Part 2 Art. 8.7 of the Administrative Code of the Russian Federation, Para. 2 of Art. 45, Para. 2 of Art. 46 and Para. 1 of Art. 47 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation the paper shows the significance of differentiation between rational and sustainable use of natural resources in land law for law enforcement. The proposed differntiation leads to overcoming legal uncertainty when bringing to administrative responsibility and forced termination of rights to land plots for failure to fulfill mandatory measures for the land improvement. The author substantiates the supression from the objective side of the administrative offense provided by Part 2 of Art. 8.7 of the Administrative Code of the Russian Federation, of the failure to act on mandatory improvement of lands. The reasons for the proposed change of the rule include: 1) the absence in law enforcement practice of the facts of bringing to administrative responsibility under Part 2 Art. 8.7 of the Administrative Code of the Russian Federation for failure to comply with mandatory measures to improve lands; 2) recognition by courts in most cases of the design of part 2 of Art. 8.7 of the Administrative Code of the Russian Federation as a formally defined crime; 3) the study of Part 2 Article 8.7 of the Code of Administrative Offences of the Russian Federation in the science of Land Law exclusively in the context of the failure to implement mandatory measures to protect land and soil; 4) only social relations in the field of preservation and protection of land against negative impact can be the object of an administrative violation.

The paper has become the fourth work in a cycle of studies carried out by the author to investigate the independence of the judiciary. It is devoted to the implementation of the principle of irremovability of judges as one of the declared guarantees of their independence. The paper analyzes the institutional and individual independence of courts and judges, concludes that it is individual independence of judges that plays the special role in ensuring the independence of the judiciary in general. Within the framework of the study, the reader’s attention is drawn to the components of the irremovability of judges: the period of granting the status of federal judges and the special procedure for suspending and terminating their powers. The author criticizes various age limits established by the legislator, upon which judges’ powers are terminated. Such a differentiated approach, in his opinion, conflicts with the general legal principle of equality and a sectoral principle of the unity of the status of judges. As a consequence, the leadership of the highest courts, given the possibility of reassigning them repeatedly, falls into a harmful dependence on the person entitled to nominate them for the positions of the President and Vice-Presidents of the relevant court. The author provides discouraging forecasts concerning the implementation of the constitutional amendment extending the powers of the President to deprive the status of judges of the Constitutional, Supreme Courts, Cassation and Appeal Courts of the Russian Federation. The work elaborates on the procedure for bringing judges to disciplinary responsibility, which is designed to protect their independence, but in view of the existing shortcomings allowing the use of this mechanism in order to monitor and pressure judges. In this regard, the author substantiates and proposes an impressive list of measures aimed at changing the situation. These measures include changing the composition of the qualification panels of judges, restricting the participation of judicial leadership and higher courts, their expansion by the judges of the Constitutional Court and the strengthening of their public participation, the establishment of the possibility of challenging the decisions of the qualification panels of judges by applicants.

The paper substantiates the definition of the concept of an “early warning mechanism”, proposes narrow and broad approaches to its interpretation, analyzes the inherent legal, political and administrative parameters. The paper demonstrates the correlation between the principles of subsidiarity, proportionality and competence within the framework of the early warning mechanism, their inseparable interrelationship and consequent practical problematics. The author investigates the main forms and methods of regulating the procedure for implementation of the early warning mechanism in EU member states. It is stated that the main differences can be traced in the context of the fixed circle of subjects of the right to conduct verification, as well as the degree of detailed elaboration (specification) of the field of regulated legal relations. Based on an analysis of the content of some reasoned opinions of national parliaments, it is concluded that the lack of a common understanding of the principle of subsidiarity at the European and national levels, as well as the criteria for its compliance, have a direct impact on the early warning mechanism, which is reflected in the reduced effectiveness of its implementation. Attention is paid to the legal nature and specifics of the “yellow card” and “orange card” regimes as a variety of forms of implementation of the early warning mechanism. It is concluded that at the current stage the “card” regimes represent an insufficient and ineffective instrument for the national parliaments to influence the EU legislative process. The author highlights the problems of organizing inter-parliamentary cooperation within the framework of the early warning mechanism. It is emphasized that, in fact, national parliaments act blindly when conducting checks on the conformity of draft legislation with the principle of subsidiarity. The paper concludes that the early warning mechanism in actual modification cannot be fully qualified as a tool for providing additional legitimation of solutions made by supranational authorities. The author makes proposals for improving the institutional configuration of the early warning mechanism.

The right to truth is a phenomenon that appeared in international law after about the 1980s. Its development is associated with the repression of authoritarian governments in Latin America in the context of basic human rights leveling, which received negative reaction from society. The global need for justice and the preservation of a stable world has led to the gradual expansion of the institute to other regions of the world. The uniqueness of the developed methods allowing us to preserve the memory of large-scale crimes against the person in the public consciousness, to improve and fill in the right to receive information (the right to know), makes it possible to talk about the right to the truth as one of the most promising mechanisms of the human rights protection system. The paper attempts to understand the right to the truth at the present stage, the scope of guarantees it contains, and examines particular cases in relation to the right to know the circumstances of crimes, including cases of enforced disappearance, facts about victims, their fate and location, identification of criminals, rights of victims and their families. The right to the truth is a dynamically developing complex institution of international law, a powerful tool in the hands of international justice bodies in the fight against the perpetrators of the most serious crimes and in the prevention of crimes, a tool for the formation of a truly legal, democratic state. It is based on customary international law, supplemented in general terms by special rules of contract law. The incompleteness of material regulation is compensated by the law enforcement activities of international courts. By its legal nature, the right to the truth is based on positive international obligations of states to prosecute, to provide assistance to other states and international bodies, and on negative obligations as a means of prevention.

In 2016 the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation was supplemented by article 762 , i.e. an innovative norm on exemption from criminal liability with a court fine. Its novelty is that it provides for: 1) conditional release from criminal liability; 2)the use of a coercive measure against a person who is considered innocent by virtue of the presumption of innocence; 3) its use is associated with the payment of a sum of money to the budget. In addition, the consent of the victim is not required for its application. In practice, there is no uniformity in the interpretation of the new law. The purpose of the paper is to summarize the practice of applying the new norm, conceptualize it and give recommendations on its application. The paper concludes that a court fine is not a liability. Agreeing to pay money to the budget and paying it is a "good deed", a form of making amends for the harm caused by a crime to society as a result of law and order violation. This may be sufficient to release you from liability if there is no victim. The rule on a court fine supplements the norms of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation on active repentance (article 75) and reconciliation with the victim (article 76) and is especially relevant in the absence of the victim, when the application of these articles is problematic. If there is a victim, the harm caused to him (including moral) must be compensated. The fact that the consent of the victim and the Prosecutor is not required for the application of a court fine does not mean that the court has the right to ignore their opinion.

The paper deals with methodological problems of understanding the component elements of a crime in the doctrine and modern science of criminal law. The author analyzes the philosophical approaches to determining the essence of this phenomenon, the influence of the classical school of criminal law on the formation of such concepts as "crime" and "component elements of a crime", reveals the prerequisites and reasons for the multilevel understanding of the component elements of a crime in pre-revolutionary and Soviet criminal law. The ratio between the crime and the component elements of a crime is revealed (based on the features of these legal concepts) and questions are raised about the non-identical understanding of the same phenomena in criminal law. The author states that the component elements of a crime cannot be identified with the concept of "crime" and is the basis for criminal liability. The component elements are always a legislative (regulatory) model, not a reality. The reality is only a committed crime, which entails the emergence of the relevant legal relations. In conflict social relations characterized by the commission of an illegal criminal act, the crime itself exists, but not the component elements of this crime. The author suggests that the component elements should be distinguished within the scope of the crime’s illegality, rather than the crime as a whole. From this point of view, it is proved that the disposition of the criminal law norm determines the model of a specific illegal act and its features (objective and subjective), since in real life the composition is associated with those features that are described in the disposition of the legal norm. The disposition does not replace the component elements, on the contrary, the component elements of illegality are revealed in the disposition of the criminal law norm. Research methods used in the course of the study are as follows: formal dogmatic, historical legal, comparative legal.

The paper analyzes the norm on criminal responsibility for inducing and facilitating suicide (article 110.1), included in the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation in connection with the expansion of "death groups" in social networks. The author pays special attention to the issues of differentiation of responsibility, calling into question the expediency of fixing in part 1-3 of this article the formal elements of crimes that provide for responsibility for "ineffective" inducement to suicide and assistance in its commission. The ratio between the public danger of inducing suicide and facilitating its commission is analyzed in detail. The author provides examples of the classification of these acts in the aggregate, when their commission does not entail the suicide of the victim or his attempt, and emphasizes the artificial nature of such a combination. The author concludes that it is necessary to refrain from splitting interrelated acts, i.e. inducing suicide and facilitating its commission, into two separate elements of the crime in parts 1 and 2 of the article. As a matter of discussion, the author examines the issue of distinguishing the analyzed acts from inducing them to suicide, and proves the validity of the legislative decision to recognize them as more socially dangerous. A separate consideration in the paper is given to the question of the nature of the determinative relationship in the elements of the "effective" inducement to suicide and assistance in its commission. Contrary to traditional views, it is noted that the acts of the inducing or facilitating a person are a necessary (mandatory) condition for committing suicide, that is, they are in a conditional relationship with it, and not in a causal relationship. When considering the issues of classification, the author reveals the content of the concept of "attempted suicide", while critically evaluating proposals to replace it with a "suicide attempt". Non-obvious elements of the analyzed crimes are indicated (targeting and special purpose), which allow distinguishing them from non-criminal acts. Finally, proposals are formulated to change the criminal law norm

The purpose of the paper is to classify the buildings built in marriage and investments made in one of the spouses’ property from the viewpoint of the current system of civil rights objects, to determine the appropriate ways to protect the interests of the spouses arising in connection with these objects. The analysis of the norms of civil and family legislation made it possible to identify the problem of legal insecurity of a spouse’s interest in common joint property when reimbursing expenses incurred in connection with his investments into the other spouse’s property maintenance or improvement. The same is true for the acquisition of ownership rights to a building erected during the marriage on a plot of land owned by the other spouse in the absence of primary registration of the right to it. It is established that a direct application of civil law object classification in determining the composition of marital property subject to division, leading to interdependent loss of efficiency of norms of civil and family law (repaying the action of each other), and deprivation of the indicated interests of a spouse legal protection. It is proved that the protection of the interest in compensation for expenses incurred to improve or maintain the personal property of one of the spouses can only be provided by adding a special norm to the Family Code of the Russian Federation that fixes the legality of this interest and determines the method of its protection. The spouse’s interest in acquiring ownership of a building erected during marriage on a plot of land owned by the other spouse, if the primary ownership of the building is not registered, can only be protected by adapting the principles of real property classification to the regime of common joint property of the spouses by expanding the scope of the exception to the principle of incorporation or by introducing an exception to the principle of superficies solo cedit.