Moscow University Law Bulletin. 2025. 2.

The importance of legal ideology is increasing not only at the national level, but also at the regional level. The problems of both scientific research and the realities of international practice regarding the categories of «national legal awareness» and «legal thinking» are changing. Increasing attention is being paid to the formation of a regional and universal ideology of interaction between countries and peoples. In this regard, the problems of forming new types of legal ideology that are not bound by state borders require their own understanding. 

The purpose of this study is to determine the structural links of an ideological nature, namely, the legal ideology of the regional level and universal character. The objectives of the work are not only the structuring of ideological components in the system of legal reality, but also the definition of tools for the development of legal ideology on the legal map of the world. 

The main method of conducting this research work is a comparative analysis of the objects of the legal sphere, which found its way out in the proposal to form a universal theory of law, which is a doctrinal component of the legal ideology of a macro-level nature. 

As the results of the conducted research, proposals for the formation of regional and universal types of legal ideology are presented. The main forms of modern regional ideology and the theoretical and methodological basis for the formation of a universal legal ideology are determined. Approaches are proposed for the use of ideological components that make up the essence of modern legal families of Romano-Germanic, Anglo-Saxon and religious-communal types. In terms of practical recommendations, it is proposed to adopt a universal international document, the object of which will be the ideological criteria for the legal rapprochement of countries and peoples. As an example, the practice of adopting national concepts of legal policy is given, one of which appeared in the post- Soviet legal space in 2023.

The article presents problematic issues of determining the subject composition of administrative legal relations, their classification, and the identification of legal entities as subjects of administrative law. The author substantiates his position on the possibility of defining legal entities as subjects of administrative law by developing the norms of administrative and legal regulation, including in its historical aspect. As the main criterion for organizations that are legal entities, it is proposed to distinguish the subjects of administrative law based on their position in administrative legal relations as subjects of public administration, their exercise of public authority, and the persons to whose activities such management is directed. 

The author considers it necessary to identify the general provisions inherent in a particular group of subjects of administrative law that determine their administrative and legal status, the need for a clear division of the subject composition of administrative and legal relations and, based on this, further administrative and legal regulation, to prevent confusion in the activities of one subject in the exercise of public authority functions and conducting economic activities from one’s estate. the negative aspects of the increasingly widespread practice of granting public-legal powers to economic entities activities. The article supports the questions of researchers about the need to determine the expediency of having the rights of a legal entity from public authorities, taking into account their participation in civil turnover on behalf of public legal entities.

The article is devoted to the analysis of the content of the principle of social responsibility of everyone for the well-being of society and the state. One of its manifestations is the principle of generational solidarity. The current trend in the development of relations between a person, society and the state in the context of current challenges and threats necessitates the search for an optimal balance between these subjects, optimizing the ratio of rights and obligations. The elements of the social responsibility structure are the subject of the specified responsibility (an individual or a group of people), the object of social responsibility (the range of social relations for the development of which the subject bears social responsibility) and the social community, acting as an authority that evaluates, stimulates and controls the subject’s activities. Consolidation of common efforts is an important guarantee of State sovereignty, independence, national interests, and economic prosperity. The article analyzes the legal regulation in this area in the Russian Federation, the Republic of Belarus and the People’s Republic of China. The significant role of not only legal norms, but also other social norms, which remain highly effective, is emphasized, which is characteristic of Chinese traditions. 

For the Republic of Belarus, taking into account the constitutional norm on social responsibility of everyone, the need to make a feasible contribution to the development of society and the state, the concept of “positive responsibility” is the theoretical basis for filling the legal content of “social responsibility” in resolving the dichotomy “duty — obligation”.

With the intensive spread of biotechnologies in recent years, there is an increasing need to specify and take into account the principles of bioethics in the regulation of various legal relations, including those that go beyond traditional areas such as supervision and control of biological research. Thus, the fourth part of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation establishes prohibitions on patenting and other state registration of intellectual property results that contradict public interests, principles of humanity and morality. But these principles are not specified in the legislation. At the same time, specifying and taking into account the principles of bioethics in civil law relations, including in the field of intellectual property, seems necessary in order to form a comprehensive intersectoral system of balancing the advantages and risks of new biotechnologies, in particular, preventing the use of legal mechanisms for the protection of intellectual property in violation of moral requirements. 

Based on the results of a comprehensive analysis of doctrinal and normative legal sources, the author comes to the conclusion that the list of bioethical principles to be taken into account in the legal system, in conditions of intensive development of biotechnologies and other scientific achievements, cannot be static, but is constantly expanding and changing, which must be taken into account when determining the rules of legal regulation. Moreover, it must be assumed that there is currently no universally recognized unified system of bioethical principles that could be applied as a basic model for accounting in intellectual property law. Taking into account the above, the author proposes a multilevel and intersectoral system of legal mechanisms for situational accounting of bioethics principles (both existing and those that may arise in the future) in the field of intellectual property.

In the article the author considers the problem of the lack of legislative definition of the activities of non-profit organizations (hereinafter — NPO), and also compares the signs of entrepreneurial activity and activities of non-profit organizations, coming to the conclusion that the activities of commercial and non-profit legal entities differ in their content. The article analyzes judicial practice in terms of the grounds for liquidation of non-profit organizations in carrying out their statutory activities, namely, it reveals the problem associated with the restriction of activities on the territorial principle of certain organizational-legal forms of NPOs, which subsequently leads to a violation of the constitutional right of citizens to their association. 

In the article the author argues that the lack of legislative fixation of the concept of activity leads to the fact that the law enforcer represented by state bodies can give a different assessment of the activities of non-profit organizations. On two examples of public organizations (sports federation and public organization uniting representatives of creative activity) it was shown that one and the same activity can be considered by law enforcer differently, in the first case as permissible activity, in the second case, as a gross violation of the current legislation.

Categorical thinking might be understood as logical generalization, which serves as a prerequisite for the existence of categories in law, including in the branch and research realm of financial law. Categorical thinking mediates the formation and substantive development of financial and legal categories. Functionally, categorical thinking not only contributes to the formation of categorical-conceptual series of financial law, but also contributes to the formation of financial legal order. At the same time, categorical thinking, while providing constructive “rigidity” of the categorical-conceptual network, is inert and can slow down the formation of new legal categories and notions in the context of rapidly changing social relations. Financial law categories such as “finance”, “financial activities of a government”, “financial system of a state”, “government credit”, “government debt”, “currency exchange regulation”, “currency exchange control”, “banking regulation”, “banking supervision” and others, are determined by financial legal norms, they structurally construct the public finance law as a law branch, reflecting the economic forms of funds flowing mediated by relations with constituent entities. Such categories are synthetic, absorbing all aspects of social relations — not only legal, but also political, economic, social, managerial, moral and ethical and others. At the same time, legal thinking produces financial and legal categories that are “analytical”, since they represent a mental concentration of purely legal features of the reflected social relations.

The principle of balanced budget is one of the fundamental principles of the budget system as a whole. At the same time, it is well known that budgets are mostly adopted with deficit or surplus, and the state of balance in reality is unattainable. Under such conditions, the government’s actions to equalize the budget imbalance are of particular importance. 

This article is devoted to the mechanism of ensuring budgetary stability and its constituent elements — the methods the government has at its disposal to counteract crisis phenomena. The methods are considered through the prism of existing legal institutions and are divided into direct and indirect by the way of impact on economic indicators. When analyzing the effectiveness of the legal mechanism, in addition to objective factors, the historical experience and mentality of the population are taken into account, which largely predetermine the popularity and effectiveness of certain measures. 

The article substantiates the necessity of competent legal elaboration of economic methods by means of improvement of existing and integration of new legal institutions. The institutions of borrowing, privatization, contingency funds, budget sequestration and budgetary rules are considered in the context of equalization of budgetary imbalance. Attention is paid to the issue of their correlation and priority for optimal functioning of the country’s economy.

Some signs of armed attacks on educational institutions characterize these events as a new youth type of terrorist activity, but unlike terrorism, school shooter does not have the goal of destabilizing the activities of the authorities. Based on the research of the circumstances of the school shootings, the methods of their commission, the level of public danger, as well as the personality of the shooters and their behavior, it is possible to identify the hallmarks that are inherent in both terrorism and armed attacks on educational institutions. In terms of sentencing severity for mass murder, the U.S. criminal provisions obviously stands out, while the Norway’s imprisonment rates are among the lowest in Europe and penal policies generally are among the mildest.

The article deals with the approaches to the definition and realization of authority of judiciary in Russian pre-revolutionary criminal procedural science. After the brief characteristic of the definition of authority of judiciary its implementation in judicial organization and criminal procedure is studied. It is shown that the authority of judiciary in judicial organization requires special subsidiary bodies of judiciary, that cooperate court in the accomplishment of its main power of the administration of justice. The problem of the authority of judiciary in the aspect of pre-revolutionary criminal procedure is examined regarding its stages. The attention is focused on the way with the help of which judiciary may control a criminal process from its beginning to an end. Particularly during an inquiry police forces were placed under control of Public prosecutor’s office, and at the same time public prosecutor was considered as a subsidiary body of judiciary. On the following stages of criminal procedure the judiciary represented by judicial investigator and court resolving a dispute played a leading role. A stage of committal proceedings differentiating subject to the crime under examination is separately discussed.

Flats, non-residential premises, parking spaces, land plots for gardening and land plots in residential schemes are well-known, understandable, and widespread property in Russia. However, the rights and obligations inherently linked to the ownership of such objects are far less obvious to average Russian person: participation quota in common property, the obligation to maintain it, the right/obligation to participate in decision-making regarding such property, the obligation to refrain from construction interference in common property, not to occupy common spaces, to comply with common property use conditions, and so on. This article explores Russian legislation devoted to a special type of property that arises when parts of real estate are allocated for independent economic purposes, belonging to different individuals — individual (private) property — and parts of common use —“common property of real estate owners”. The paper proposes to term this legal regime “sectional ownership,” to develop a corresponding legislative framework based on the concept of condominium scheme, in order to eliminate the ambiguity of the definition of “common property of real estate owners” and to clarify the legally significant relationships between individual (private) and the common property in the scheme, between real rights, and between the owners of real estate (to underline the existence of co-ownership community). Additionally, the article attempts to systematize the manifestations of sectional ownership in Russian law.

The article compares the process of succession in civil law and common law. It is generally believed that the difference between them lies in the direct or indirect transfer of inheritance: in continental law the inheritance passes to the heir, while in common law the inheritance is first transferred to the personal representative and then to the heir (beneficiary). The author concludes that the reason for the difference is that in civil law the heir not only receives the inheritance, but also “liquidates” it, while in common law these tasks are distributed between the beneficiary and the personal representative. This helps to explain why common law does not provide for legates existing in civil law, and does not recognize a combination of limited and unlimited liability for the debts of the deceased. Furthermore, it follows that common law succession also provides for a universal succession that takes place not between the deceased and the beneficiary, but between the deceased and the personal representative.

This article investigates the origins and identifies the prerequisites for the emergence of the institution of the firm. Then the process of formation of the doctrine of the firm in Europe in the periods of the Middle Ages and the New Age is analyzed. The sources used were domestic and foreign (mainly German) literature of the corresponding periods. When writing the work, author used historical-legal, comparative-legal and logical methods. With the help of these methods, it was revealed that the prerequisites for the emergence of the institution of the firm appeared in medieval Europe, also the relationship between the emergence of trade partnerships in medieval Europe and the need to distinguish the trade transactions of partners from the personal transactions of each of them was established. Author notice that already in the Middle Ages lawyers began to realize the distinction of means into those that distinguish the subjects of law and replace the signature and those that distinguish the objects of law and their properties. The problem posed by medieval jurists led to the necessity of solving the question of what exactly a firm distinguish, a merchant or a trade establishment? The solution of this question at the end of the XIX century led to the distinction between the concepts of firm and trade establishment.

The problem of legal regulation of contracts not provided for by the current positive civil legislation has long been the object of scientific research of many generations of scientists. Providing the participants of civil relations with the freedom necessary for them to carry out their activities should be recognized as an essential condition for the effective development of the economy of states based on the principles of a free market. The legal recognition of various atypical private law constructions is precisely one of the manifestations of such freedom. As the main such atypical constructions, most often encountered in practical activity, it is customary to single out unnamed and mixed contracts, which are understood as agreements of counterparties, in respect of which the current civil legislation does not provide for any positive regulation. In this regard, the main objectives of this article are to describe the historical development of the Russian normative regulation of mixed and unnamed contracts; to identify a clear distinction between these atypical agreements among themselves, as well as with the named contractual constructions enshrined in the current civil legislation; to analyse the main doctrinal positions regarding the essence and specificity of mixed and unnamed contracts, including foreign researchers; to find the optimal mechanism for the application of rules for the following types of agreements.

The article examines the problems of adoption of the Constitution of the Japanese Empire (late 19th century). It analyzes the grounds for choosing the Prussian Constitution of 1850 as a model for the Basic Law of Japan of the Meiji era and mentions the reasons why the constitutions of some other countries were rejected. It describes the circumstances that forced Japanese politicians to begin work on drafting the country’s fundamental law, the first drafts of the Constitution, the contribution of Ito Hirobumi, as an outstanding Japanese political figure, to the development and adoption of the Basic Law of Japan, and the influence of Japanese traditions and customs on determining the status of the Head of State. It shows the main points of the translated from Japanese Natsushima bill prepared by Ito, which served as a basis for the working group drafting the Constitution, and comments on it by the German lawyer Hermann Rosler, to whom Japanese politicians and lawyers often turned for advice in the field of constitutional law. It narrates in details what happened on February 11, 1889. This was the day of holding a ceremony of the adoption of the Constitution, which consisted of religious and secular parts. This day remained firmly in memory of the inhabitants of the Japanese archipelago. The opinions of Japanese scholars are represented regarding the first Japanese Constitution in the European interpretation of this term, based on the Japanese sources. An inference is made about the conservative nature of this law, which was unable to prevent the militarists from coming to power and unleashing wars in the middle and in the late first half of the twentieth century.

The article examines the process of legalization of separation of spouses without divorce among peasants in the last decades of the Russian Empire. Involving archival materials previously unexplored in science, the author demonstrates three contradictory lines of legal regulation of the separation of spouses: the legislative prohibition (with a small number of exceptions prescribed in the law) on the separation of husbands and wives; permission to issue separate residence permits to wives in the order of the monarch’s favour in the practice of the III Division of Her Majesty’s Own Chancellery, the Department of State Police, the Commission (Chancellery) of the Russian Empire. I. H. Chancellery, the State Police Department, the Commission (Chancellery) of Petitions to the Emperor; decrees of the Governing Senate, which in some cases allowed local authorities to issue separate residence permits to peasant women without the consent of their husbands. It is concluded that the formation of the institution of separate residence of spouses in the Russian Empire did not take place at once for all estates, but gradually. Specific legislation on peasants, which directly allowed the issuance of separate residence permits to members of the peasant yard without the consent of the householder, was the reason why the peasant class was the first to obtain the right to seek separation of spouses.

A thorough understanding of legal phenomena is impossible without understanding how they are created (constructed). This is especially important for such a fundamental element of law as legal norms. It is well known that the legal norm is the most important element of the mechanism of legal regulation, serves as the foundation for lawmaking and therefore indirectly performs the most important functions associated with the implementation of law in society. An analysis of legal doctrine shows that today scholars do not draw a clear line between the categories of “legal norm” and “legal norm” and use them as synonyms. A legal norm is the basis for legal relations and other legal phenomena, through which legal regulation is ensured in various social spheres. At the same time, the question arises as to what constitutes the construction of a legal norm as a legal phenomenon. The study of this question is the purpose of this study.