The paper is devoted to the study of interrelation between the concepts of «judicial acts,» «judicial practice» and «sources of civil law.» The general theory of law and civil law do not contain any uniform approaches to the definition of the concepts under consideration. Therefore, the author analyses the named expressions, determines their general and specific features, and makes proposals for further improvement of civil legislation in this direction. From a general theoretical point of view, sources of law constitute external manifestations, forms of consolidation of laws and by-laws, various conditions and reasons for the emergence of existing forms of law. The concept of a source of law depends on understanding of the essence and content of the law itself. As far as is known, there are doctrines concerning natural and positive, objective and subjective law, public and private law, scientific concepts of the historical school of law, psychological school of law, etc.

Domestic legislation does not provide for the institution of judicial precedent inherent in Anglo-Saxon law. Thus, legal stances of both the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation and the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation take a special place in the legal and judicial system, they are aimed at creating a unified judicial practice throughout the country, strengthening protection of rights and legitimate interests of individuals and legal entities. Judicial practice occupies an intermediate position between legal custom and law; it is formed at the discretion of a judge (judges) considering a particular case by passing a legal and fair judicial decision in writing in order to implement the current legal norm. Judicial discretion does not exclude a creative approach to the case under consideration, logical and systematic application of the law rules and unified judicial practice.

The maxim of the positivist approach, according to which the courts must strictly follow the letter of the law, today keeps turning into the abolition of judicial acts «in view of unclear, ambiguous legislative regulation of competence delimitation lacking specificity and due clarity,» which does not exclude referring the case for a new hearing (with proper consideration of the merits of the case in previous instances). Courts do not apply uniformly amendments to the procedural legislation (Federal Law of 28.11.2018 No. 451), as well as new clarifications that appeared in the context of the amendments (Resolution of the Plenum of the RF Supreme Court of 30.06.2020 No. 12; Resolution of the Plenum of the RF Supreme Court of 22.06.2021 No. 16) that have finally overcome contradictions between traditional understanding by the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation of the right to a competent court and the ideas of the ECHR concerning objections to jurisdiction only in the court of first instance. In situations when a court decision is overturned and referred for a new consideration to the court of first instance, the classical understanding of the constitutional right to defence by a competent court looks like an image, a weak effort to lend legitimacy to the arguments provided by the appellate court. Taking into account that the rules of competence and jurisdiction are far from always being determined according to the merits and features of the case, and amendments made to the procedural legislation concerning distribution of cases between courts still do not implement the proposal of the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation to enshrine in the law a criterion that allows determining a competent court, and that they are implemented arbitrarily, it is proposed to clearly formulate the rule restricting both participants in a disputed legal relationship to make procedural objections based on the lack of jurisdiction of the court of appeal, if such a right could have been exercised in a court of first instance, and the rule to overrule the decision only in cases where a person was really restricted in access to justice and the exercise of the right to judicial protection due to violation of jurisdictional rules.

The paper is devoted to identifying current trends and assessing the current prospects for the development of Russian climate legislation in the context of implementation of the European Green Deal that provides for refusing the use of minerals and transiting to renewable energy sources by 2050. Based on the results of a comprehensive analysis of national regulatory legal acts, including documents of state strategic planning of the first goal-setting level on the climate agenda, primarily the Climate Doctrine of the Russian Federation, the National Security Strategy of the Russian Federation, and the Strategy of Socio-Economic Development of Russia with a low level greenhouse gas emissions until 2050, the authors substantiate the conclusion according to which the Russian Federation has all the possibilities for a relatively stable and safe energy transition. The new Federal Law of 02.07.2021 No. 296-FZ «On Limiting Greenhouse Gas Emissions» constitutes a turning point in climate legislation that completely changed approaches to balancing environmental and economic interests. The adoption of the Law opens up opportunities for an innovative ecological and economic development, facilitates the synthesis of economic and environmental benefits gained from the carbon units’ circulation, and launches a complex process of gradual rejection of the commodity trend. However, to what extent this Law will be adapted and applicable to the already existing environmental legislation and to what extent the environmental legislation is ready to radical changes concerning principles and approaches to the regulation of relevant legal relations is a priority task that deserves the broadest attention.

Based on the theory of administrative process, the paper characterizes a general purpose of disciplinary proceedings, provides the views of researchers on the activities of subjects of disciplinary authority to impose disciplinary sanctions as administrative proceedings, administrative jurisdiction or substantive procedure. A lack of consensus on the legal nature of disciplinary proceedings led to studying its most important characteristics and procedural category, namely: the procedural form, analysis of its content and structure. The author determines the meaning of the procedural form in disciplinary proceedings and the legal consequences of its non-observance. Taking into account available approaches, the paper describes the main features of the procedural form of proceedings in disciplinary cases. It has been substantiated that an independent procedural form is inherent in the enforcement of disciplinary cases – an obligatory qualitative feature of the activity in question. On the basis of the instrumental approach that implies consistent use of legal means to achieve the goals of legal regulation, to highlight a procedural component of the legal regulation mechanism, namely, the procedural and legal mechanism, the author structures the system of administrative procedural means that form the content of the procedural form of proceedings in disciplinary cases and examines their specific features. The author provides the definition of the procedural form of proceedings in disciplinary cases that takes into account its features as a scientific structure, a legal category, a structural model of administrative procedural activity of subjects of disciplinary power. It is concluded that the procedural form externally unifies and internally differentiates the main methods of law enforcement, reflects the course of legal activity and its results in procedural acts. It is stated that at present the procedural form of disciplinary proceedings is far from ideal, suggestions are made on possible directions for improving the procedural regulation of the activity in question.

In recent decades, in many countries of the world, promising applied scientific studies of architectural, construction and infrastructural environment of cities have been actively pursued for their criminogenicity. They not only expand the range of knowledge about causes and conditions of crime in cities, but also lead to the adoption of significant managerial decisions in the field of urban planning, construction, reconstruction and improvement of the territory of settlements, implementation of which neutralizes and suppresses criminogenic factors. In many cities, the level of crime has significantly decreased and the degree of victimological safety of city dwellers has increased due to carrying out these practice oriented scientific developments based on the connection identified by criminologists between crime and the nature of urban development, the location and appearance of buildings and structures, a layout of settlements, urban design and other environmental factors and following the conclusions and recommendations obtained from their results. Intensive processes of urbanization and urban population growth, which are observed today all over the world, actualize such studies and make them especially actual. This study not only acquaints the reader with the theoretical basis, teleological foundations, features, basic principles, the most recent results and new knowledge obtained by modern scientists-criminologists who study criminogenic factors of architectural, construction and infrastructural urban environment, but also with specific empirical material, obtained by the author and his colleagues, demonstrates the positive effect, heuristic potential and advantages of the direction of scientific research under consideration.

The authors continue the cycle of their joint research related to the problems of using the results of operational-search activities in proving criminal cases. Based on general methodological approaches to the essence of proof, the results of operational-search activities are examined in the epistemological aspect, namely, as information products that are of great cognitive value for the needs of law enforcement practice. At the same time, attention is drawn to the legal uncertainty of the category «results of operational-search activities» that is caused by the mixing of all items, documents or information obtained by operational-search means, into a single array, regardless of the methods of origin, that is, specific forms of cognitive interaction of law enforcement officers with different sources of information.

In this regard, the conclusion is drawn that the criminal procedural doctrine and criminal procedural legislation need their own (sectoral) narrower understanding of the results of operational-search activities as certain information products to be used by an inquiry officer, investigator, judiciary, and, if necessary, by other participants in a criminal case to ensure the possibility of correct application of the criminal law and resolution of a number of related issues.

It is substantiated that such an approach requires introduction into law enforcement practice of criteria that make it possible to single out the results of operational-search activities in the criminal procedural sense from a variety of other information obtained by law enforcement officers in the course of operational-search activities, namely: a) their irreproducibility, i.e., impossibility of re-obtaining the relevant information by the investigator and (or) the court; b) potential verifiability for legal goodness through the criminal procedural toolkit. Based on the foregoing, the authors’ definition of the results of operational-search activity in the criminal procedural sense is formulated.

In law enforcement practice, there are many examples when public authorities are unable to ensure law and order in the use of digital technologies. This is attributed to the fact that law-making activities in the field of digital law are focused on “pre-digital” methods of public administration. This imbalance between legal regulation and public relations arising in the digital environment can be resolved through the institution of digital maturity, the formation of which is closely interrelated with the institutions of digital transformation and the digital state. The paper analyzes the basics of the designated legal concepts through the analysis of the legal regulation of the evolution of the implementation of information technologies by public authorities.

One of the most important internal functions of the state is to work with information, which today has become a central element of managerial decision-making. This state of affairs makes it possible to call the state one of the beneficiaries of information revolutions. The society has gone through four information revolutions, each of which transformed the system of public administration. Today we can observe a new information revolution associated with the use of end-to-end digital technologies that have already had an impact on society and the mechanisms of the state. The paper systematizes information revolutions and their impact on the transformation of the public administration system and social interaction. The analysis made it possible to predict changes in the mechanism of the state caused by these processes.

To analyze the use of information technologies in the field of public administration, the paper summarizes the existing state legal concepts in this area. The analysis made it possible to identify their haphazardness and inconsistency. To eliminate this shortcoming, the paper formulates a universal classification of state legal concepts, including the following legal categories: electronic state, electronic democracy, electronic autocracy, electronic government, electronic justice, and electronic parliamentary, digital state. The proposed classification should contribute to improving the quality of law making and law enforcement activities in the process of regulating the use of information technologies in the field of public administration.

The rapid development of the cryptocurrency market makes us think about the need and subject of regulation of activities related to their issuance, placement, storage and circulation. The question arises whether the activities that are related to them are entrepreneurial or professional, related to the commodity or financial market, subject exclusively to state regulation, exclusively self-regulation or both types of regulation at the same time. The authors come to conclusions that will allow building a theoretical basis for a more systematic perception of the cryptocurrency market in the future, including revealing the concept and legal nature of cryptocurrencies, the features of these objects of civil rights that require their free circulation in the financial market, the role of private entities in their creation and use. It is concluded that the activities related to the turnover of cryptocurrencies are entrepreneurial, unregulated activities in the capital market as part of the financial market. Special attention is given to public interest in the framework of the circulation of cryptocurrencies, in particular to national security issues, protection of the weak side of transactions using cryptocurrencies, protection of personal data. In particular, the authors acknowledge that intermediary activities in the cryptocurrency market involving financial services consumers should be regulated and recognized as professional. The authors, on the one hand, point to the need to ensure state regulation of the use of cryptocurrencies, on the other hand, emphasize that a balance must be achieved between public and private interests in this area, that it cannot be over-regulated, which will ensure stable economic growth in the digital environment.

Digitalization is, perhaps, a distinct marker of our time, embodying modern values and vectors of development of economic and social processes in societies and states. However, the modern scientific and technological revolution, which significantly changes the architecture and functionality of the platform law that is being formed before our eyes, invariably entails the evolution of legal concepts that improve the regulation of innovations that appear in connection with its development. The popularity and a kind of indispensability of artificial intelligence technologies in everyday life naturally requires a legal assessment of the use of smart technologies and the creation of the necessary legal conditions for effective interaction of society with network law, platform solutions and ecosystems. The paper analyzes the impact of the introduction of artificial intelligence technologies into modern digital platforms from the point of view of the transformation of the needs for legal regulation and the evolution of platform law as an important legal regulator of the development of digital ecosystems for various purposes, which gives grounds to put forward the concept of the beginning of the process of formation of ecosystem law.

The authors draw attention to the fact that platform law competes with the law of the state and leads to the improvement of AI, which threatens the very existence of a person. As a result, there is a need to limit AI in the interests of ensuring human security, which is possible only within the framework of a new, «environmentally friendly» human system, i.e., an ecosystem functioning in the interests of man and humanity. In turn, such a system cannot exist without a new ecosystem law, the development of which legal science can and should predict.

The paper is devoted to the application of the principles of law in contractual relations, the emergence or implementation of which are associated with the use of digital means. The development of digital technologies has caused objective changes in the structure and qualities of economic turnover. At the same time, objective changes mean those that are formed due to changes in the behavior of private entities at the micro level.

The author substantiates the thesis according to which, in conditions of a lack of regulatory regulation, the relevant principles of law are in demand sources of law for resolving potential conflicts of interest. The author states that in conditions when the main categories of civil law are being revised — subjects (identity identification), objects (tokenization), transactions (ways of expressing will in the digital economy), fulfillment of obligations (smart contracts), the main thing that law will remain unchanged is its principles. The principles of law are lawthemselves; the rest is either changing forms of relations that law affects, or a changing mechanism for the implementation of legal ideas. In turn, it is the principles of law that contain invariable methods of resolving conflicts of interest, which is the main subject of law. Complicating the contractual relationship with a digital element not only does not cancel the application of principles to such relations, but at the stage of insufficient regulatory regulation as a means of implementing the principles of law requires their active use to resolve conflicts of interest.

The paper classifies some cases of digital means application at the stage of concluding a contract, fulfilling obligations, and enforcement. The potential of the principles of law for resolving disputable situations in digital contractual relations at each stage of the development of contractual legal relations is shown.

Numerous uses of the phrase “artificial intelligence” both in science and in legal regulation makes it impossible to carelessly and arbitrarily use this category when regulating public relations. It is this circumstance that forces us to address the problems of the conceptual and categorical apparatus and legal regulation of this category. In the paper, the author analyzes the existing approaches to the concept of artificial intelligence presented in the legal literature. The author shows that the genesis of any concept in law and outside of it is primarily related to our knowledge of the object, and concludes that it is impossible to reason about artificial intelligence in law until it is clearly defined in the technical fields of science.

The author concludes that the incorporation of artificial intelligence into the ontology of law is possible within the framework of two main approaches. The conceptualist approach involves understanding the properties and knowledge about artificial intelligence as an object of the real world and the subsequent derivation of a legal definition based on this knowledge about the object. The regulatory approach is attributed to the fact that the legislator will assign artificial intelligence a certain legal status regardless of its actual properties and characteristics (by analogy with the assignment of real estate status to aircraft and ships). At the same time, without defining the approach, without analyzing the properties and characteristics of artificial intelligence as a technical and cultural phenomenon, discussions about preventive regulation are, in the author’s opinion, unfounded and not based on either science or law.

The paper examines the current gender aspects of legislation regulating relations with the family element (mainly from the family legal space), the practice of its application by the courts. The provisions of the legal doctrine, primarily civil and civil procedure, on this issue are summarized and analyzed. Meanwhile, the author intentionally leaves civil law out of the field of research, since civil law norms are specified by family and administrative legislation and are gender neutral. The gender contexts of the institution of marriage (its heterosexual legal attitudes, the legal consequences of sex change in marriage, the problem of same-sex marriage, de facto marriage, gender prohibitions in the divorce procedure), the institute of parenthood (presumption of paternity, the influence of gender stereotypes on the legislation on the establishment of extramarital paternity, the law enforcement presumption of the mother’s preferential right to leave her young child, the rights of fathers, same-sex parenthood and its consequences), the institute of surrogacy (gender differentiation the subject composition of the program participants, controversial administrative and judicial practice in cases of the legal consequences of the use of assisted reproductive technologies). Other gender aspects of Russian family legislation are analyzed (for example, gender neutralization of norms on alimony obligations). In the argumentation of his position on these issues, the author not only relies on the analysis of legal norms, court decisions and provisions of legal doctrine, but also refers to the sociological meanings of gender practices. The author notes that the proposed approaches to the classical and modern gender contexts of family and related legislation indicate the actualization of both the problem as a whole and the need to answer questions on its individual components.

The modern development of social relations and reproductive technologies has brought new questions and actualized interest in the situation of plurality on the father’s side. The problem that needs to be resolved is the search for a balance of interests of interested persons with a discrepancy between biological and legal paternity, taking into account the rights of the child, the search for an optimal solution. A European researcher focused on the ideal family model drew attention to the fact that it often does not correspond to social reality, which creates problems and does not always serve the interests of the child. The extension of the rights of the biological father is also considered in the context of legal protection of the sense of quality of life. The purpose of this work is to identify and study the rights of the biological father, to find a balance of interests and rights in the relations developing in the family sphere. The authors identified the interests of the parties, determined the objective rights of interested persons, determined the limits of the exercise of the rights of the biological father to establish paternity in the absence of a registered marriage with the mother of the child. Conclusions are drawn about the trends in the development of legal regulation, the need to maintain a balance of interests of persons in modern real relationships, taking into account the interests and rights of the child. It is noted that the identified problems are characteristic of different states; legal regulation based on a single presumption in different states has differences in the details and variants of behaviors established by the legislator. The conclusions drawn can be used as a basis for the development of concepts of fatherhood, proposals for the development of legislation regarding the exercise of personal rights of fathers and children, taking into account the balance of rights and interests of individuals.

The paper examines alternatives to criminal prosecution under the Liechtenstein Criminal Procedure Code of 1988 based on normative and doctrinal sources. The interest in the topic is not accidental. This institution is one of the most developed in the legal system of the Principality. The general conditions of alternatives to criminal prosecution are analyzed, it is shown to what procedural moment and on whose initiative they can be applied. The grounds for refusing criminal prosecution against both individuals and legal entities have been investigated, since both, according to Liechtenstein law, can be given the status of the accused. It is shown that these alternatives, as a rule, have a conditional character and if the accused has not fulfilled the duties assigned to him, then criminal proceedings against him are subject to resumption. Since one of the tasks of restorative justice is to protect the rights and legitimate interests of the victim, the Liechtenstein legislator regulates in detail his participation in various conciliation procedures with the participation of the accused through the mediation of the body conducting the proceedings. The paper summarizes that the inclusion in the Liechtenstein CPC of an extensive list of alternatives to criminal prosecution is due to the desire of the legislator both to humanize criminal proceedings and to ensure compliance with reasonable deadlines for the consideration of cases. The Liechtenstein legislator differentiates alternatives to criminal prosecution against individuals and legal entities, since the legal and economic situation of these subjects of law and subjects of criminal proceedings differs in many ways. The legal consolidation and practical application of alternatives to criminal prosecution in Liechtenstein harmoniously fits into the general vector of the evolution of judicial proceedings in many European countries (France, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, etc.).