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The article analyses the order of establishing Public Councils in the system of the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation, and forming their panels; their functional destination; their rights and duties; forms of cooperation between Public Councils and the Investi- gative Committee of the Russian Federation, and other state bodies; legal validity of their solutions; the order of organization of their activity, taking into account the legal regulation of the social organs activity in foreign countries. Besides generally positive appreciation of Public Council’s activity in the system of Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation, the author pays great attention to further development of the regulation of legal status of the appropriate Public Councils.

Keywords:  Public Council, Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation, participation of citizens in realization of state power, legal status of Public Council.

The author examines main stages of strengthening of the unity of state power, which is characterized by the key role of the President of Russia in its implementation. The author compares principles of federalism, unity of state power system, and separation of powers. The conclusion is made that principle of unity of state power and principle of separation of powers does not contradict each other. The article observes main areas of implementation of presidential powers, and describes his role in strengthening the unity of state power in process of reforming federal system. Based on the analysis of legislation and legal positions of Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation, the author demonstrates the scope of competencies of the head of the state. The author concludes that concentration of authority and expansion of presidential powers does not always meet constitutional principles of federalism and separation of powers. As a result, it does not allow to achieve appropriate balance between legislative, executive and judicial powers, on one side, and federal and regional authorities, on the other. The suggestion is made to enshrine the comprehensive list of presidential powers in legislation, and at the same time, to conduct federal reforms in strict accordance with the Constitution of the Russian Federation and with the goal of building democratic federal state governed by the rule of law.  

Keywords: President of the Russian Federation, division of powers, unity of state power, federal transformation, legal positions of Constitutional Court of Russia.

The article deals with some unexplored legal issues of theory and practice of territorial organization of the state. The author reconsiders traditional approach to the definition of federal and regional states (which implies such inductive features, as regional symmetry or asymmetry, as characteristics of federal or regional state in general). In order to distinguish between notions, the author draws direct attention to the conceptual quality of federation, regarding practical features of specific political systems solely as means ensuring this quality. The results of the research allow evaluating contemporary Russia as regional, but not federal state.

Keywords: territorial structure of state, federal state, regional state, constituent unit of federation, territorial entity, autonomy.

Problems of defining extremism (extremist activity) in legal and scientific practice are discussed, peculiarities of this concept in Russian linguistic consciousness are described. Based on the results, possible questions are specified, which can be used in judicial linguistic expertise in cases of extremism; signs of information, which stimulates national, race or religious hostility are singled out. In conclusion, the necessity of correction of the definition of "extremism", as well as expansion of the list of questions solved within the frameworks of judicial expertise and increase of the number of experts is proved. 

Keywords: extremism, extremist activity, forensic linguistic examination, inciting information. 

The article analyzes one of the possible forms of democracy of involvement – independent anti-corruption examination. The author brought to light a number of features, which characterize the legal regulation of independent anti-corruption examination in the subjects of the Russian Federation included in the Ural Federal District. He concludes that under current conditions, the anti-corruption examination appears to be one of the few really effective forms of the democracy of involvement in the Russian Federation. However, as it becomes evident from the analysis that the legislation needs to be improved on the level of the subjects of the Russian Federation. The main directions of the legislation improvement are as follows: adoption of relevant regional law, expansion of a circles of experts in the subjects of the federation, mandatory considerations of experts’ conclusions in some legal acts; resolution of consequences of non-publishing of regulatory drafts.

Keywords: democracy, participation of citizens in the exercise of public authority, the Federation, subjects of Federation, democracy of involvement, consultative democracy, civil society institutions.

The article refers to the functional sentence perspective in the popular-science texts from the Scientific American. The communicative functions of various adjuncts in the initial, final, and intermediate positions in declarative sentences have been analyzed. The function of theme does not appear to be typical of the adverbial modifiers of place, time, and manner. It is more logical to speak about the function of antetheme (anticipatory theme) with reference to both detached and non-detached adverbial modifiers in the initial position in the sentence. By their semantics, these adverbials are presuppositionally connected with some known facts in human minds, but in the sentence structure, they are followed by the actual communicative core of utterance in the form of subject and predicate. Adjuncts in the final position regularly perform the function of rheme. Such sentences make up the bulk of our corpus.
Keywords: functional sentence perspective, theme, antetheme, rheme, topic, focus, adverbials, communicative dynamism, popular-science text, discourse, proposition, presupposition.