QUALITY OF THE LAW: DOCTRINAL LEVEL OF UNDERSTANDING, LEGAL REQUIREMENTS, ECHR CASE LAW

Abstract

The article is devoted to defining the system of requirements that a quality law should meet through the prism of the following provisions: legal doctrine, provisions of Ukrainian legislation and case law of the European Court of Human Rights.The methodological basis of the study was the comparative legal, structural and functional, formal and dogmatic research methods. Their application made it possible to clarify the requirements for a quality law through the prism of: the position of the Venice Commission, the case law of the European Court of Human Rights, the requirements of Ukrainian legislation, and scientific research by domestic and foreign researchers on quality law. The study made it possible to state that the quality of law is not a purely theoretical category.It is a requirement addressed to the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine and the Head of State, an area of their joint responsibility.The quality of the law is a complex category that is revealed through the prism of a system of requirements that any law must meet. These requirements were best defined by the Venice Commission in its Report No. 512/2009 on the Rule of Law. The ECtHR has made an important contribution to understanding the principle of legal certainty as a requirement for a quality law.The value of these developments lies in the ability of an individual to protect himself or herself from a poor quality law or its individual provisions.The quality of a law is determined by a number of mandatory factors, including: compliance with the rules and requirements of legislative technique in the law-making process; constitutional and legislative requirements to a draft law and the law-making process; and passing of mandatory and additional expert reviews. The quality of a law is a relative category, which is due, on the one hand, to the existence of certain limits to the regulatory potential of any law, and, on the other hand, to the constant development of social relations, which over time are not adequately reflected in legislation. Of course, these circumstances do not negate the requirement for the quality of laws, but indicate its certain objective limits.