Issue materials

This article analyzes the human rights competences of deputies of all levels of state authorities in the Russian Federation: federal parliamentarians (including senators), deputies of legislative (representative) authorities of subjects of the Russian Federation, and deputies of local representative bodies. The human rights competences of deputies are delimited from human rights powers of the Parliament. The article justifies the use of the term “competence” regarding the human rights activities of deputies. It introduces the division into individual and group human rights competences. The specifics of the human rights competences of deputies is noted, it is shown through the peculiarities of the methods to obtain and keep information about violations of rights and freedoms. The correlation between the method of electing deputies and their potential as human rights advocates is revealed. The following human rights competences of deputies are analyzed: initiating judicial proceedings (in the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation and courts of general jurisdiction); sending deputy appeals (requests for information, deputy requests and demands to eliminate violations of the law, rights and freedoms of citizens); visiting bodies and organizations by a deputy. Conclusions are drawn about the incompleteness of the human rights competences of deputies, the imperfection of the legal mechanism for their implementation, the absence of many important human rights competences of deputies in the subjects of the Russian Federation and especially deputies of the municipal level. In this regard, some novelties are proposed: endowing federal parliamentarians with individual competence to appeal to the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation and the similar but already group competence of deputies at the level of the subject of the Russian Federation; endowing all deputies with the right to appeal to the courts of general jurisdiction to protect the rights and freedoms of citizens and organizations; unification of the institution of deputy appeals, including specification regulating the institution of the deputy’s claim to eliminate violations of the law, subjective rights and freedoms; expansion of the number of organizations available for deputies to visit by involving entities that implement publicly significant functions.

Keywords: deputy, competence, human rights, deputy inquiry, judicial protection, parliament, control, human rights activities

New books by staff, Institute of Philosophy and Law, Ural Branch of the RAS

The status of municipal power as a special kind of public power actualizes the issue of the formation of a scientific concept of municipal legal liability. Such a concept should be comprehensive: take into account the peculiarities of municipal legal relations, the dynamics of legislative regulation of the institution of local self-government, law enforcement practice, the status and functions of local self-government bodies. This article is devoted to the consideration of these issues.The methodological basis of the research comprises a wide range of general scientific and special methods with the prevalence of a systematic approach, a formal legal method and methods of interpreting legal norms. The author formulates the essential characteristics of municipal legal liability, which enables to more clearly distinguish it from constitutional legal liability not only in terms of the form, but also the content. From a practical point of view, the article focuses on the analysis of the current legislation, the proposed regulatory changes, as well as the relevant judicial practice. As a result of the study, the author determines legal nature and significance of some elements of the mechanism for bringing local councils to liability, identifies positive aspects and disadvantages of the proposed legal changes and formulates proposals to change certain provisions aimed at improving the guarantees for the activities of local councils. The proposed amendments to the legislation correspond to the concept of municipal legal liability and at the same time they are designed to help maintain a balance between centralization and decentralization of public power. The results obtained are relevant in the context of the ongoing municipal reform, as well as in the context of reforming the legislation on public power in general. The results can be used in further scientific research, lawmaking and law enforcement. 

Keywords: local self-government, local council, liability, municipal legal liability, dissolution, municipal reform, guarantees of local self-government

The aim of this article is to identify the specifics of representation, realized by the local consultative bodies, which are created to ensure the participation of citizens in local government. To consider this problem, the author relies on foreign and Russian experience. Such concepts of representation as representation-resemblance and representation-distinction (representation-substitution) serve as the theoretical basis of the research. The author highlights the advantages and disadvantages of these theories and examines their specific manifestations in different countries. It is emphasized that the structures ensuring the similarity of the representative with the people are developed primarily for representative bodies. To determine the composition of consultative bodies, the most optimal way is the representation of social groups. However, this raises a number of issues that need legal regulation: which social groups should be represented in a particular body; how its structure is determined; how representatives of social groups are selected, etc. It is noted that consultative bodies might include only one social group or all the groups emerged as a result of the division of society according to some criteria. The structure of the body may be defined once by its rules of procedure or separately for every convocation of the body. The author believes that the structure of the consultative body is subject to legal regulation since it affects the decisions taken. Another controversial issue concerns the selection of representatives. For this purpose, elections, delegation of members by associations or random selection can be used. Despite the fact that delegation of members is the easiest way to ensure representation, it is unable to engage the whole population. Therefore, this method of selection needs additional guarantees such as objective legal criteria for choosing an association and the democratic way for the association to select its representative.

Keywords: representation, resemblance, distinction, substitution, local consultative bodies, associations, random selection

The article examines the possibilities of a meaningful revision of analytical and managerial approaches within the framework of the state policy aimed at ensuring social unity. Today, its implementation is often complicated by the potential of socio-demographic super-diversity and value pluralism accumulated by the majority of societies. The cumulative effect of these processes suggests the presence of deeply divided communities under the facades of the political unity of modern states. The article substantiates the thesis that the combined accumulation in the structure of society of minorities consolidated around social status and the growth of the political significance of minority value discourses only at first glance have common roots and are subject to diagnosis and social therapy by similar methods. The article analyzes the reasons of contemporary institutional preferences in favor of solving the problems of diversity consolidated around social status. It is established that they are predominantly related to the institutional specifics of the modern state. The political potential of decentralized value-motivated actors, their contribution to the social polarization, and the repertoire of political action are considered. An approach to the conceptualization of such actors as discursive coalitionsis proposed. The article explains why the state identity policy evades targeting the decentralized actors and suggests possible directions of replenishing the analytical arsenal for their identification, fixation of their requirements, and development of mechanisms for integrating deviant value discoursesinto the mainstream of unity policy. The article examines the judicial branch as a system directly predisposed to communication with decentralized public discourses, and shows possible ways of its institutional development as one of the central subjects of the state policy of social unity.

Keywords: policy of social unity, civil identity, national-state identity, decentralized value system, discursive coalition, discursive conflict, political values, constitutional patriotism, unity of legal space, judicial branch 

The article is devoted to the historical and philosophical study of the origin and formation of the prerequisites of national patriotism in medieval Europe in the optics of the political theology of martyrdom. It is argued that the figure of a national hero-patriot, sacrificing his own life in the name of the fatherland (pro patria mori), has a certain martyrological content derived from the Christian cult of martyrs. The willingness to die for their beliefs and faith, which gives the phenomenon of martyrdom a politically motivated character, allows us to talk about the possibility of building a political martyrology, within the boundaries of which a Christian martyr as a citizen of the heavenly city (civitas coelestis) appears as a defender of his fatherland (defensor patriae paradisi), sacrificing his own life. Since Christianity acquired the status of the state religion, the heavenly city has been involved in the historical context of the Late Roman Empire, with the prospects of which the fate of Christianity itself is actually identified. The need to protect the empire from barbaric invasions forces theologians to develop the concepts of just war (bellum iustum) and holy war (bellum sacrum), which led to the secularization of the idea of the army of Christ (militia Christi) that initially implied participation in the battle with the forces of evil only on the rights of a spiritual army. The combination of two axiological systems (Christ army and secular army) was carried out through the glorification and militarization of the figure of the martyr, on the one hand, and the functional-figurative comparison of the figure of the warrior with the figure of the martyr, on the other. The protection of the Holy Land (Terra Sancta) in the era of the Crusades served as a model on the basis of which the idea of the heavenly homeland began to function in the secular register. As a result of the further evolution of the monarchical state in the paradigm of the “political body” (corpus politicum), the religious imperative of self-sacrifice of a Christian for the sake of the heavenly fatherland acquired the form of a public-legal requirement of civil self-sacrifice for the benefit of the earthly fatherland, which later took shape as a national state.

Keywords: political theology, martyrology, martyrdom, martyr, Christianity, Middle Ages, patriotism, patriot, nation