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Vol 76, No 3 (2023)
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PRIVATE LAW / JUS PRIVATUM

9-20 528
Abstract

The paper states that recently changes have been made to the procedural codes, which actually led to the legislative recognition of judicial practice as a source of substantive law (including civil law). Judicial practice, at least since the mid-90s of the last century, has not stopped trying to master the law-making function, the intensity of which has significantly decreased after the Supreme Arbitration Court of the Russian Federation ceased its operation. The science of civil law, represented by a large group of scholars, has also taken the path of justifying the search for law beyond the law. The paper substantiates the idea that this «ultra-American» trend does not correspond to the social conditions of Russia. Russian civil law should return to its German origins, which implies the search for law exclusively within the framework of the law. At the same time, the concept of legal interpretation and law enforcement borrowed in Germany should be supplemented with a rationalistic doctrine of legal interpretation. This approach will replace intuitive jurisprudence, covered by references to the «meaning» of legislative and other regulations.

21-40 1754
Abstract

Technodeterminism determines the main task for civil law when solving issues related to blockchain technologies and smart contracts. This task is connected with the search for answers to the question of the need to amend civil legislation in order to adapt it to new technological challenges or about the possibility of effective application of existing legal norms to the regulation of innovative civil relations.

In the doctrine, there is a hypertrophied attitude towards blockchain and smart contract technologies. The standing exists that due to smart contracts, trust in people is replaced by trust in the code. Eschatological predictions were made about the beginning of the end of classical contract law, about emergance of «contract law 2.0». The paper states that the digital code will not be able to replace reality in the field of contractual relations. The revolution in contract law has not happened. Instead of the «revolutionary path» highlighted by some authors, there is a gradual evolutionary development of ideas about a civil contract. The civilistic doctrine has responded to technological challenges by becoming rhizomorphic in its interdisciplinarity, trying to comprehend the legal phenomena associated with the digitalization of public relations.

The «ideological core» of the civil doctrine, the «core» of the concept of the contract, remained untouchable. A legal smart contract has remained a speculative phenomenon from a parallel reality, a simulacrum. The Russian and foreign doctrines are dominated by the traditional interpretation of a civil contract, since the concept of a legal smart contract is not able to solve the problem of its incompleteness. From the perspective of futurological perspective, it can be assumed that the traditional approach to the contract will retain its significance, and the digital code will have only an auxiliary, servicing value for the contract.

PUBLIC LAW / JUS PUBLICUM

41-51 381
Abstract

The paper is devoted to the study of issues related to the implementation of behavioral supervision in the financial market. It is determined that the issues of legal regulation of the protection of the rights and legitimate interests of consumers of financial services in general and behavioral supervision in particular, financial market regulators began to pay increased attention after the global financial crisis of 2008. In its most general form, behavioral supervision is the supervision of how financial institutions interact with consumers. At the same time, behavioral supervision is associated not only with the identification and suppression of violations of current laws and bylaws, but also with countering unfair practices of financial organizations. It is important to understand that behavioral supervision is a tool that ensures compliance with a wide range of social norms, including legal and (partly) moral (ethical) norms.

It is established that within the framework of the model of a single megaregulator of the financial market, the effectiveness of behavioral supervision is provided by: a) the allocation of a structural unit responsible for protecting the rights and legitimate interests of consumers of financial services; b) the adoption of internal rules for resolving conflicts of interest between the structural units of the regulator responsible for the implementation of various types of supervision in the financial market; c) establishing of an out-of-court body for the protection of consumers of financial services; d) adoption of basic standards for the protection of the rights of consumers of financial services within the framework of self-regulating organizations in the financial market and monitoring of SRO members compliance with these standards.

It is determined that behavioral supervision contributes to increasing the availability of financial services, ensuring fair competition between financial organizations, strengthening consumer confidence in financial service providers, improving, developing and ensuring the stability of the financial market.

52-62 414
Abstract

The paper examines the institute of parliamentary control from the point of view of its modern constitutional and legal understanding in the general system of state control (supervision), municipal control and public control in their interrelation. The papere provides an unambiguous positive assessment of precise declaration and disclosure of parliamentary control directly in the text of the Constitution of the Russian Federation that took place during the comprehensive introduction of amendments to the Russian Constitution in 2020 aimed at improving regulation of certain issues of organization and functioning of public power. A promising proposal is made that in the future, within the framework of a unified logic of improving the constitutional and legal institutions and significant instruments of state and municipal administration, including those aimed at improving the quality of the functioning of the unified system of public power in our country, we should also consider how to consolidate in the Constitution of the Russian Federation the terms and fundamental principles of state control (supervision), municipal control and public control in the same accentuated and substantive manner in the Constitution of the Russian Federation of the Russian Federation. A number of specific legislative proposals have been formulated, including proposals aimed at bringing the goals, objectives and principles of the types of control under study closer together. A new version of Article 2 «Objectives of Parliamentary Control» of Federal Law No. 77‑FZ dated 7 May 2013 «On Parliamentary Control» is proposed and justified, other significant changes in the context of the topic under study are formulated in the Federal Law No. 77‑FZ, as well as in Federal Law No. 212‑FZ dated 21.07.2014 «On the Basics of Public Control in the Russian Federation». Implementation of the above proposals will serve to strengthen the system of regulation and implementation of various types of control in Russia, develop tools and improve the effectiveness of parliamentary control and, in general, solve the complex task of improving the quality of public and municipal governance in our country.

CRIMINAL LAW SCIENCES / JUS CRIMINALE

63-71 316
Abstract

The paper focuses on the problem raised in its title and verified it as a scientific hypothesis. Based on the analysis of regularities in the investigation of corruption crimes and scientific developments on the same subject, statistical data and standings of leading forensic scientists, it is proved that there are two problems: practical and scientific. The first is the presence of a negative pattern in the activities of law enforcement agencies, a kind of informal priority in the fight against minor crimes that do not represent legal and criminalistic complexity. The second problem related to the first, but already a scientific problem, is that a lot of scientific forensic developments, for example investigation techniques, are devoted to the description and investigation of just small, uncomplicated crimes. The author analyzes the causes of these problems, including methodological ones. Thus, in criminology, research programs for studying and generalizing the practice of investigating criminal cases have not been fully developed. Criminal cases that have resulted in convictions are not a completely valid and not the most informative source for a criminologist—developer. The author suggests supplementing these sources with a list of five types of, relatively speaking, «unrealized» materials.

As a result, conclusions are drawn that criminology as a science should: 1) be critical of the noted practical regularity; 2) adopt the principle of priority for the development of recommendations for the investigation of the most complex and dangerous crimes. In addition, forensic techniques in cases of corruption crimes should contain a number of main areas of investigation, the essence of which is the priority of combating high—level, serial attacks, the activities of organized criminal groups and money laundering.

72-86 310
Abstract

The paper deals with the implementation of international standards for the protection of individual rights in criminal proceedings consolidated in the decisions of judicial and quasi-judicial intergovernmental human rights bodies. The author gives a characteristic of the main stages of interaction of the legal system of the Russian Federation with the system of international standards, perceived through the practice of the ECHR. The paper examines features of the execution of the ECHR acts after the Russian Federation withdrew from the Council of Europe. The article analyzes the legal foundations of the activities and legal properties of acts of quasi-judicial bodies of the United Nations in the context of the grounds for reviewing national judicial decisions in criminal cases. On the basis of Russian judicial practice, the legal model of sentence review based on international judicial and quasi-judicial acts is analyzed: the stable characteristics of this model are determined, the patterns of implementation of acts of quasi-judicial bodies of the United Nations in Russian judicial practice in criminal cases are described, the factors requiring improvement of this model are analyzed. It is concluded that the existing model of regulation of these relations is based on insufficiently clear provisions of the Criminal Procedure Code of the Russian Federation in their interpretation by the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation and the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation. This model does not fully take into account the specifics of individual legal acts of interstate human rights bodies. In conclusion, the article proposes the author’s concept of the reform of the model of resuming criminal proceedings in connection with these acts of interstate human rights bodies. As one of the conclusions, the paper notes that at the present stage of the development of criminal procedure, legislation and the practice of its application in the Russian Federation, the issues of implementation in domestic law of international human rights treaties through the execution of decisions of their control (judicial and quasi-judicial) mechanisms with competence to consider individual reports of victims of alleged violations of these treaties remain relevant.

CYBERSPACE / CYBERSPACE

87-99 756
Abstract

The paper discusses the issues of legal regulation of decentralized financial services (DeFi). The purpose of the work is to form a systematic understanding of the direction and scope in which they can be regulated based on the DeFi technological features and the nature of the relationships that arise between digital platforms and their users.

The methodological basis of the study is determined by the range of tasks and is focused on the analysis of decentralized finance simultaneously in technological, socio-cultural, political and legal aspects. Structural functional, taxonomic, constructive, situational, innovative, targeted and program-targeted methods form the complexity of the study. Taken together, they allowed us to study DeFi in their systemic unity and formulate the following conclusion. Decentralized finance is an independent model of finance organization both in terms of a set of technical characteristics (the use of distributed registry technology, smart contract protocols, oracles, etc.) and in terms of the nature of relations between the parties (horizontal P2P communications). The identified features allow us to consider them as a separate object of legal regulation. At the same time, it is important to take into account that the matrix of DeFi regulation at the national and international levels should be built in accordance with their taxonomy and assume simultaneous balanced consideration of technological features and product affiliation of services. The legal regulation of decentralized finance in the Russian Federation should primarily be focused on minimizing the risks associated with user identification, as well as determining the legal status of decentralized autonomous societies (DAOs), organizing centralized examination of protocols and preventing cyber attacks.

100-109 389
Abstract

Amid forensics digitalization, an extremely urgent issue is to find a reasonable balance between private and public interests, between preserving the secrecy of correspondence, privacy, etc., guaranteed by the Constitution of the Russian Federation and the availability for obtaining information remotely without the user knowing about it, intercepting information transmitted over computer networks, and studying the memory of electronic devices. Illegal actions with electronic digital information can cause serious and irreversible consequences associated not only with property damage, but also with physical harm to people. The peculiarities of high-tech crimes are their high latency and the constant growth of their number. We should note that the scale of cybercrime has changed. The possibility that «cyber attacks» will be automated reduces the requirements for the qualification of the violator and increases the number of crimes. The current situation necessitates a comprehensive study of not only the investigation of crimes in the field of computer information, but also the digitalization of forensics in general. The technological progress of the 21st century in the field of cyberspace and electronic document management, the specifics of electronic information and methods of its seizure, production tactics persistently require the expansion of forensics objects, as well as the range of investigative actions regulated in the Code of Criminal Procedure of the Russian Federation. However, such an expansion of the range of investigative actions should be approached very carefully.

The methodological basis of the study was: dialectical method as a general scientific method of cognition; general scientific and private scientific methods of theoretical and empirical cognition (features of the reflection of digital information in the information environment): description; analysis and synthesis of criminologists’ points of view; comparative legal method and method of system research.

PHILOSOPHY OF LAW / PHILOSOPHIA LEX

110-123 361
Abstract

This paper is an attempt to build a different paradigm of environmental law in the conditions of the planetary transformation of the Earth in the context of such civilizational paradigms as archaic — modern — postmodern — supermodern with the transition to the sixth technological order. These realities require both traditional and innovative legal regulation. The spectrum of transformations includes the initial parameters of the current order, the hierarchy of structures and the dynamics of their interaction, the level of fluctuation and bifurcation vectors, as well as attractors for exiting the turbulence zone. In order to answer these questions, the authors monitor previous and current environmental and historical trends in the world and the goal setting of what we are building in response to the challenges of the future on the basis of expanding interdisciplinary horizons, a systematic approach, a new range of methodologies and conceptual and categorical apparatus. Through the method of multidimensional didactics, legal topics are associatively connected to the consonant tasks of other subject areas with logical structuring and analysis of isomorphic meanings and semantic models for optimal synthesis of the developed legal systems with ensuring their applied effectiveness and practical application options. Interdisciplinary registers make it possible to build a new ecological and legal doctrine with the correction of the mutual importance of man and nature in the conditions of the global collapse of the capitalist system, based on impoverished natural resources and an increasing ecological catastrophe. Since it is necessary to go to the capital coordinates of the living cosmos for earthly problems to be solved, the «reasonable man» has completed a purely earthly cycle of evolution and must position himself as a «Universal Man» with access to a new ecological political and legal paradigm. These should include formulas (semantic images), integrals (keys of wholeness) and algorithms (methods of action, ways achievements) rule-making matrices.

HISTORY OF LAW / HISTORIA LEX

124-135 335
Abstract

On April 12, 1869 the Supreme Court of the United States rendered the decision in the case of Texas v. White in connection with the appeal of Texas on the fate of the bonds issued by the state during the Civil War of the North and South. The resolution of this issue, seemingly far from the constitutional and legal aspects of secession, forced the Supreme Court to speak on a number of related issues. These include the «eternal and indissoluble union» of the states that entered the United States, the American nation and its expressed will, the nature of American federalism, the possibility of secession of the states as such. The court answered in the negative as to whether a state can unilaterally secede from the United States, thereby laying the foundations of a modern judicial constitutional and legal doctrine on the admissibility of secession. In American and European science, this decision is still the subject of discussion. The paper analyzes the documents mentioned in this decision, outlines the main arguments of the Supreme Court, and reveals the arguments of scientists criticizing the decision. The paper shows the difference between the approach of the US Supreme Court in interpreting the «silence» of the US Constitution and modern approaches in other countries of the Anglo-Saxon system of law (in Canada and the UK). The problem of the validity of the decision of the US Supreme Court in the case of Texas v. White in the context of modern international law is touched upon. In conclusion, the author expresses her opinion on the reasons for the use of arguments and approaches of the Supreme Court in this decision by modern constitutional control bodies in different countries. The author believes that in search of justification for the existing legal framework in the conditions of the «silence» of the constitution on secession, the US Supreme Court chose those fundamental provisions that do not directly relate to it, but are contained in the constitutions of many countries, and at the same time managed to link them with the inadmissibility of secession.

136-145 480
Abstract

The current geopolitical situation in the world dictates the need to find new approaches in the field of countering global external and internal risks. Often such a search leads to the expediency of returning to social practices that have already been implemented and have proven their viability: if not a complete reverse, then the use of the most useful social tools that are maximally applicable in domestic conditions. Crime has always been one of the main internal threats to national security. In this regard, a retrospective study of the means and methods used to counter crime is not only interesting, but also practically useful. The experience of legal regulation and practical implementation of the crime prevention system in the USSR has both advantages and disadvantages. The identification of positive aspects, the identification of effective tools that could be used in the process of improving the currently existing crime prevention system in Russia, could make it possible to build the most effective promising model of counter-criminal activity at the present stage. The appeal to the crime prevention system in the USSR is due to the special significance of this period of national statehood, marked by significant historical events that demonstrated the role of the state in ensuring security, respect for human and civil rights and freedoms, including those who violated the law. During the Soviet period, special attention was given to the penitentiary and post-penitentiary period of the re-socialization of convicts, the provision of correctional and educational influence on them, a real system of preventing recidivism was built. Modern studies of such experience are actualized in connection with the organization of the probation system in the Russian Federation as a set of measures, functions and powers of the relevant entities assisting convicts who find themselves in a difficult life situation, which is ultimately aimed at preventing crimes.

GENOME / GENOME

146-157 417
Abstract

The paper examines the situation that has developed in recent years in the field of patenting the results of genomic and genetic research and manipulation, the main trends and possible ways of developing relations and regulation in this area. This includes the role of Russia and the BRICS countries in the future world order, where genetic and genomic technologies and the fruits of their application will (and partly are already) one of the most important values. The author analyzes the existing and possible forms of securing rights to these values for copyright holders, and accounts the difference between genetics and genomics (and the gradual erosion of this difference with the appearance of «designer genes»). The author concludes that now there is no sufficiently developed, reasonable and workable alternative to the existing system of protection of the rights to the achievements of genetics and genomics while maintaining the expediency of searching for such an alternative. The existing system provides unreasonably many advantages to individual corporations and states that have managed to secure the largest possible amount of rights to the achievements of genetics and genomics. The paper analyzes some international acts designed to ensure a fair distribution of benefits between the owners of advanced technologies and the «suppliers» of the original genetic material. These have so far been undeservedly ignored in our country, but are gaining new significance in the course of the ongoing «genomic revolution» based on the mass application of the CRISPR-Cas genomic editing method. Possible directions for coordinated actions of the BRICS countries on patent cooperation in relation to the results of genomic and genetic research and manipulation are proposed. As one of the conclusions, it is indicated that the use of BRICS as a platform for building a better future for all mankind, and not only for patent holders, fully corresponds to the role and prospects of BRICS in the modern international system, stated in the Concept of the Participation of the Russian Federation in the BRICS association.



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ISSN 1729-5920 (Print)
ISSN 2686-7869 (Online)