The paper examines one of the areas of law application that is methodologically based on an individualized approach to the norms of law with their subsequent broad interpretation in relation to specific legal situations. Similarly, the vector of rule-making is determined in relation to the transportation of crude oil and its refined products entirely by sea. The work not only reflects the basic doctrines of legal understanding, but also presents an assessment of their law enforcement potential, the ability to influence the formation of sectoral, intersectoral institutions of law. The author examines financial intermediation and hedging that performs the same dealer functions, but with much lower costs than classical banking institutions. Implementation of the institution of a derivative credit instrument in law enforcement practice is of particular interest to the author. The paper considers such a phenomenon as confrontation between natural and positive law in the context of entrepreneurial activity. Transportation of petroleum products’ tenders is considered as a compensated use of property. The positivist legal understanding is seen by the author as no less important. The paper explains to what extent it can serve as a basis for making management decisions concerning market risks, risks of changes in portfolios of financial instruments, risks of probable losses.

Transactions with a digital asset quite reasonably belong to the field of hedging, if there is a causal relationship between the types of the underlying asset and the hedging strategy, using digital examples. Connecting factors to the law of the payment currency, terms and amounts of payments are considered both in line with hedging strategies and utilitarially in the context of making a record of the rights’ transfer. The author draws a conclusion concerning the purpose of short and long positions of net assets hedged against margin trading limits if the security of an oil transportation transaction is found to be insufficient. Merchants receive borrowed capital secured by their own assets.

Management solutions ensure the sequence of identification of all relevant risks, facilitate attracting exclusively licensed counterparties for the formation of loan coverage, regularly replenishing the reserves of liquid funds when conducting transactions with virtual currencies and other impersonal (in personal terms) assets. With management decisions being considered as one of the measures of value, hedging is similar to a loan agreement, since they have a common goal — to gain mandatory tranche for the derivative financial instruments that invariably maintain a high level of liquidity and volatility.

The paper provides a theoretical justification of ESG standards as a potential modification of the principles of law in establishing and running a socially responsible business. The framework of traditional discussions about the degree of state participation in the economy, as well as about the state as a subject of private law relations, can be expanded by posing a general theoretical question of practical implementation about what the boundaries and limits of interaction and mutual influence of legal and other social regulators are and how useful the cumulative effect of their regulatory impact for sustainable development is. These boundaries and limits constitute today a universally recognized prospect for the humanity. Being the principles of sustainable development in relation to the creation and conduct of business, ESG standards have the quality of social normativity, but currently they are at a stage of functioning when a uniform understanding of key terminology has not yet been achieved, which leads to different approaches to the formation and regulation of this area. The paper analyzes the concept of ESG standards, as well as their components in the aspect of comparison with the principles of law. The points of contact between ESG standards and private law principles take place due to their common nature as basic ideological prescriptions. It is shown that stability, system-forming character and functionality, being parameters of ESG standards, are extremely close to the principles of private law, they are consistent with them, which makes it possible to effectively combine various methods of normativer regulation of entrepreneurial activity that meets modern needs and expectations of society. This task is especially relevant for Russia, given the high regulatory burden on business, as well as negative stereotypes of mass consciousness in the perception of entrepreneurship as such.

In the context of the constitutional and legal concept of responsible delegation of power by the people developed by the author, the paper examines a number of theoretical and practical issues relevant to the current stage of development of the local level of the uniform system of public power in Russia. The author highlights the following provisions focused on their practical implementation:

1) In the nearest future, it is possible to consider the development of new conceptual documents initiated by the Russian Federation and containing international standards in the field of organization and implementation of local self-government based on the original Russian experience. This can contribute to the entry of our country into the position of international leadership in the field of establishing appropriate legal standards;

2) Strategic turn from local self-government focusing mainly on issues of local importance and local tasks to their organic integration into a single, effectively working mechanism implemented to achieve national development goals throughout the country and promoting national interests seems to be timely, relevant and significant in the doctrinal and normative contexts;

3) A modern strategy for the development of local self-government should include a wide range of provisions involving reliance on local communities cohesion and consolidation of their efforts for responsible participation in solving local and national tasks; in this vein, an understanding of the category «local community» should develop;

4) Systemic development of the personnel potential of the municipal service is particularly relevant, including incentive mechanisms that facilitate recruitment of qualified personnel to local self-government bodies.

The author makes a number of specific proposals corresponding to the vectors under consideration.

The paper analyzes federal constitutional laws concerning the entry into the Russian Federation of its new constituent entities — Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics, Zaporozhye and Kherson regions — in terms of regulating territorial organization of local self-government. The author analyzes upcoming transformations, makes and justifies proposals regarding the need to expand the system of municipalities in new constituent entitties of the Russian Federation by including settlements as its local self-government territories. The implementation of such a provision will comply with Federal Law No. 131-FZ dated 06.10.2003 «On General Principles of Organization of Local Self-Government in the Russian Federation» and will allow the population of rural and other settlements to participate more actively in local self-government.

The paper describes the principles of the territorial basis of local self-government and clarifies the possibilities of their preservation in the conditions of the ongoing transformations of local self-government, due to the introduction of amendments to the Constitution of the Russian Federation in 2020. The author characterizes the procedures fixed in the legislation for ensuring changes in the boundaries of municipalities, transformation and abolition of municipalities, analyzes the norms of relevant laws of constituent entitties of the Russian Federation and municipal legal acts specifying the procedure for solving territorial issues of local self-government, illustrates the process of consolidation of municipalities on the example of the Moscow region. It is noted that in the Russian Federation there is a three-level legal regulation of the municipal-territorial structure, including federal and regional legislation and municipal legal acts. This makes it possible to determine substantive powers of public authorities in this area of local self-government and establish the procedure for their enforcement. Taking into account the results obtained, draft Federal Law No. 40361-8 «On general principles of organization of local self-government in the unified system of public authority» is analyzed in order to identify the degree of stability of the existing system of territorial organization of local self-government. The author summarizes that adoption of the enactment under consideration will not entail significant changes, its principles and will not change the procedure for resolving issues of territorial organization of municipal power.

The goals of punishment, enshrined in Part 2 of Article 43 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, should actually act as one of the key guidelines for the law enforcement officer when individualizing punishment. At the same time, the existing construction is rightly criticized as abstract and devoid of practical meaning. The purpose of the paper is to develop recommendations for improving criminal legislation in terms of regulating practice-oriented goals of punishment. To achieve this goal, the author has substantiated inappropriateness of attributing norms on the purposes of punishment to declarative norms, demonstarted incorrectness of specifying restoration of social justice and prevention of new crimes as the goals of punishment, explained stable failure to fulfill the goal of correcting convicts with due regard to indicators in Russia (from 2008 to 2021), highlighted the approach based on the expediency of normative consolidation of two goals of punishment (taking into account the requirements of unification (correlation with the tasks of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation), and focused on possibilities and expected results), namely, unconditional and complete restoration of the rights violated by the crime and correction of convicts. Taking into account pecularities of the existing system of types of punishment that actually makes the first of these goals unattainable, the author proposes to adjust norms regulating certain types of punishment (in essence, restorative principles should be referred to as exclusively fiscal in nature as existing punishments): priority compensation for damage caused to the victim, and only with full (or maximum possible in specific circumstances) compensation for all violated rights of the victim compensation to the State budget. The author argues that the goal of correcting a convicted person, despite being difficult to achieve (especially by criminal legal means), is necessary because it has regulatory potential.

The paper deals with the problems of legislative regulation and law enforcement practice arising in connection with the presentation of the results of operational investigative activities (OIA): an expanded understanding of directions of using the results of the OIA; attempts of normative justification of compelling to submit the results of the OIA; problems in declassifying court decisions concerning operational investigative measures. It is noted that in order to overcome the problems that arise during implementation of these relations and regulation of relations in this area, it is required to provide an academic understanding of the principles of presenting the results of the OIA. To this end, the author proposes the concept of admissibility of presentation of the results of the OIA, which includes the concept of admissibility and the main conditions mediating this process. Admissibility of presenting the results of OIA is understood as the possibility of their transfer, determined by the agency carrying out this activity, based on an assessment of their content, taking into account the procedure and directions of use, as well as restrictions provided for by the Federal Law «On Operational Investigative Activities». Conditions of admissibility include: 1) information maturity of the results of the OIA assessed with regard to the requirements of departmental regulations; 2) presentation of the OIA results with due regard to the directions provided for by law; 3) compliance with the procedure for presenting the results of the OIA, provided for by law; 4) compliance with prohibitions and restrictions imposed on information dissemination. Taking into account judicial practice and the results of the study, the authors propose a number of amendments to the legislation regulating OIA. As a conclusion, it is noted that the concept proposed by the authors concerning admissibility of presentation of the OIA results can serve as a guideline for subsequent changes in legislation, which will streamline relations in the field of presentation of the OIA results.

The paper is devoted to the problem of the correlation of the legal categories ius gentium and ius naturale in the context of the political and the Western European legal thought in the 17th century. The 17th century, rich in historical events, known in the Russian historiography as the «rebellious age», becomes a turning point not only in the history of the entire European civilization, but also in the history of philosophical thought and political science, at the intersection of which the teachings of the state and law were formed. The 17th century — the time of the systemic crisis of the feudal socio-economic formation and the traditional religious ideology strongly associated with it — gives impetus to the development of capitalist economic relations in Western Europe, which was accompanied by a sharp increase in novelty in the field of philosophical and political thought. In the 17th century, prominent European political thinkers paid quite a lot of attention to the theoretical coverage of the problems of the natural state, the social contract, as well as the analysis of the categories of freedom and justice. There was a gradual departure from the methodology of peripatetism, accompanied by a revision of the intellectual heritage of ancient political and legal thought, although at the same time European political thinkers and jurists continued to widely use the terminology of classical Roman law, but in a modified semantic field. One of the most important areas of application of the ancient legal heritage is the field of international relations, closely related to the further intensification of international commerce, religious reformation, as well as the legal mechanism for declaring war and concluding peace. In the regulation of international relations, they actively used legal systems, well known from Antiquity, but greatly transformed by Modern times, and which, according to a long-established tradition, were called ius gentium and ius naturale. Thus, the paper highlights a rather ambiguous problem of the correlation of ius gentium and ius naturale in Western European political and legal thought in the 17th century.

Following the results of the conducted research of significant milestones in the state legal understanding of state control (supervision) in different historical periods, the author shows the following. The consideration of state control (supervision), municipal control and public control in their systemic unity in connection with the issues of improving the quality of state and municipal management in modern Russia is based on long-standing state legal traditions in the domestic legal science and practice of state construction of both the pre-revolutionary and Soviet periods. The paper concludes that at present the improvement of legal regulation and constitutional and legal approaches to the understanding and organization of state control (supervision), municipal control and public control in Russia continues, while modern vectors are set by the concepts of «State for citizens», client-centricity of public administration and the expansion of risk-based approach in control and supervisory activities. The author notes that in the future it might be possible to return to the previously discussed idea of codification of legislative material in order to give the regulatory framework of control and supervisory activities even greater stability and systematization, corresponding to its extremely important importance in the system of modern Russian legislation. The author expresses a standpoint on the need to develop the legal doctrine of the control and supervisory activities as an interdisciplinary subject and a plane for interdisciplinary research given the continuing constitutional and legal basis for a systematic scientific understanding of these activities. This is important since it is this approach that can give a significant synergetic effect for the further scientifically elaborated development of control and supervisory activities in the Russian Federation.

The problem of the implementation of international legal support of special operations is a natural, historically determined and in fact staying beyond the conventional scope of international law. In fact, this is an emerging international custom based on the practice of states in defending national interests in conditions of competing jurisdiction, the legalization of the resources of the «shadow» economy, the spread of the Darknet, the development of new ways and means of warfare and its propaganda. The transnationalization of organized crime, its links with international terrorism, corruption, cybercrime, attempts to build national security systems at the expense of the security of others, the destructive ideology of national domination, accompanied by the «privatization» of state sovereignty by non-state actors, substantiates the practice of implementing special operations against existing and newly created existential challenges and threats to the security of states.

The institutionalization of some types of international special operations is obvious, based on the provisions of the UN Charter, multilateral and bilateral agreements, correlates with the activities of regional security systems (Collective Security Treaty Organization — CSTO, North Atlantic Treaty Organization — NATO, League of Arab States — LAS, Organization of American States — OAS, Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe — OSCE, etc.). The uniqueness of special operations in each specific case, the impossibility of their absolute legal settlement, especially in the military-political sphere, raises the question of the need to revise a number of provisions of the UN Charter as ineffective, the formation of new (unipolar) regional mechanisms for monitoring their implementation, the activation of special scientific research in this area.

The paper reveals the features and civil legal significance of accounts in social networks. It is proved that an account in a social network is characterized by features of an object of civil rights: the ability to satisfy private property and personal non-property interests of subjects; discreteness; legal binding; the presence of a normative and functional connection with the civil law system. It is shown that the integration of accounts into the civil law system occurs at the following levels: 1) the civil legal personality of the account holder; 2) the civil legal grounds for acquiring the right to an account in a social network; 3) the civil legal essence of actions to use the account, the production of «administrative» acts; 4) the civil legal regime of the results of intellectual activity and means of individualization that arise within the framework of the functioning of the account; 5) the civil consequences of using the account, varying depending on the specifics of the actions of the subject; 6) civil legal ways to protect the rights to the account and to protect the information contained therein; 7) civil liability applied in case of violations of the rights of account holders or their commission of offenses. The author supports the thesis on the application of the principles of civil law in interaction with the principles of information law in the system of legal relations arising from the use of the account. The differentiation of the legal status of the account holder (user) in the context of relative and absolute legal relations is shown. The features of the turnover of the account are determined, the instrumental value of the account as a legal means of achieving the goals of the subjects is revealed. The author identifies some problems of legal guarantee of property and non-property interests of users in the case of application of public law restrictive measures to social networks. The paper raises a question on the need for international legal regulation of relations in the field of cross-border functioning of social networks. The author makes a conclusion about the peculiarities of the civil law regime of accounts in social networks and substantiates the necessity of using contractual instruments to ensure the property and non-property interests of account holders.

The review presents the most important provisions of the monograph by E.N. Tonkov and D.E. Tonkov under the title «Legal Realism» (St. Petersburg: Aleteya Publ., 2022. 464 p.) and their assessment. The reviewed work is interesting not only for its in-depth historical coverage of the origin and evolution of legal realism in the USA, Scandinavia and Russia, but also for the analysis of its current state. Legal realism, according to the authors, is one of the most relevant directions for post-modern jurisprudence in the scientific thought of France, Italy, the USA and other countries, including post-Soviet Russia. The relevance of legal realism is justified not only by the search for a «third way» in the legal understanding (between legal positivism and the concept of natural law), but also by bridging the gap between the dogmatic theory of law and legal practice. The first section contains a detailed description and analysis of the main provisions (ideas) of the founders of legal realism in the USA — K. Llewellyn and D. Frank (including from the positions of their modern interpreters), as well as the conceptualization of this trend from the standpoint of today. The distinctive features of the movement (but not the school, which the authors rightly insist on) of legal realism are given. Of particular interest is the analysis and conceptualization of the problem of legal certainty and judicial activism from the standpoint of American legal realists, presented on the pages of the monograph.

The second section of the monograph analyzes the main provisions of Scandinavian legal realism — the legacy of A. Hagerstrom, V. Lundstedt, K. Olivecrona and A. Ross. Perhaps, the content of the third section of the monograph devoted to Russian legal realism will arouse the greatest interest among many readers. The study of the relatively recent historical past of our country is extremely important for a lawyer, according to the authors, because the current state of law and order is largely determined by this past. The analysis of the doctrine as a source of law, the multiplicity of legal systems, including individual regulatory systems and the inevitability of conflicts between them, is one of the best places in the reviewed monograph. The fourth section of the monograph is devoted to the analysis of modern postclassical concepts of legal realism presented by B. Leiter, B. Tamanakhi, M. Troper, B. Bix and others, which will undoubtedly arouse considerable interest in the reader, as well as a wonderful monograph as a whole.