The paper analyzes modern scientific views on the term «human freedoms.» The author examines scientific approaches to the concepts of «human rights» and «human freedoms» and compares the content of these concepts and their meaning in legal practice. The paper investigates historical roots of the emergence of the term «human freedoms» in the current legislation of the Russian Federation. The impact of The Universal Declaration of Human Rights on dissemination of the term «human freedoms» in the national legislations of most countries is assessed. The paper argues inexpediency and even harmfulness of using this term both in scientific legal constructions and in the norms of law. Specific proposals have been formulated to amend legislation in order to prevent it from being filled with terms that do not have a clear and specific content, which are not used in law enforcement practice, create discussion in scientific communities and contribute to a vague understanding of fundamental legal structures by future lawyers.

In the paper, based on the analysis of legislation and municipal legal acts, the author defines the concept of «municipal procedure» and identifies the main features of municipal procedures that distinguish them from other socially significant procedures, provides their characteristics and elucidates the idea of the need for harmonization of substantive and procedural municipal legal norms. The paper justifies classification of municipal procedures based on target and subject criteria in order to provide a more in-depth study of the purpose and content of municipal procedures and facilitate their practical application. The author justifies that the multiplicity of municipal procedures having their own subject of regulation and subjects of their application allows us to put forward for research the issue of their unification and structuring into municipal procedural law as a sub-branch of municipal law of the Russian Federation. The author highlights that after completion of the ongoing reform of the legislation on local self-government in the context of amendments to the Constitution of the Russian Federation in 2020, conditions will be created for the formation of this sub-branch in the system of municipal law of the Russian Federation.

The paper elucidates the concept of publicity as a principle of proceedings in administrative offenses The essence of the principle of publicity is expressed in the requirements to ensure public consideration of an administrative offense and guarantee access to information concerning it. Based on a systematic analysis of the provisions of the Constitution of the Russian Federation, international law, the Code of Administrative Offences of the Russian Federation and legal standings of the highest judicial authorities, the paper explains elements of the principle of publicity characterizing its content in administrative proceedings. The paper examines existing exceptions and limitations regarding the requirements of openness in administrative proceedings as well as statutory gaps and contradictions in implementation of the principle of publicity. On the ground of decisions in specific cases, the paper highlights the importance of legislative guarantees of the principle of transparency in administrative proceedings.

The paper is devoted to consideration of peculiarities of the legal status of state extra-budgetary funds as subjects of financial legal relationships. The author examines the process of state extra-budgetary funds formation and determines the causes of their emergence. It is noted that at the initial stage of the formation of the modern budgetary system of the Russian Federation, state extra-budgetary funds were considered as an instrument ensuring appropriate spending of funds. This way can be considered extensive, since it leads to a quantitative increase in centralized funds within the financial system. In addition, it is money consuming, since it requires the allocation of funds to support the activities of the apparatus of the relevant funds. In any case, multiplicity of extra-budgetary funds that existed until recently was a vestige of the post-perestroika economy. An unsystematic nature of the sources of normative regulation of activities of state extra-budgetary funds, obsolescence and actual inconsistency of many of their norms with the current model of legal regulation, absence of specialized laws defining their legal status have predetermined inefficiency of both the structure and functioning of state extra-budgetary funds. This, in turn, has led to the merger of the Pension Fund of the Russian Federation and the Social Insurance Fund into a uniform Pension and Social Insurance Fund of the Russian Federation. The paper analyzes the specifics of the budgetary and legal standing of the new state extra-budgetary fund.

Since June 1, 2018, a new form of intra-group loan has appeared in the Civil Code of the Russian Federation — groups of bank accounts, when all or some bank accounts of one or more persons (individuals or legal entities) can be combined into one group of accounts. Such a group is established to transfer funds if they are insufficient to the account of one of the group members or if there are insufficient funds on one of the accounts belonging to the group and belonging to one person. The doctrine disputes the need to introduce a group of bank accounts into the legal field due to its alleged fraud and the possibility of its replacement by other legal structures, in particular by assigning the performance of an obligation to a third party. The paper provides a comparative analysis of these two legal structures — imposing performance of an obligation on a third party and on a group of bank accounts. Few common features of these two constructions are investigated — the debtor is not discharged from responsibility for the obligation, and the creditor, as a general rule, is obliged to accept performance. A number of differences have been identified, in more than 10 points, in particular according to the nature of the obligation, formalization of these relations, the subject composition, etc. The author explains the advantages of a group of bank accounts in comparison with the assignment of the obligation to a third party. It is concluded that a group of bank accounts is an independent form of financing for subjects of civil law different from imposing the performance of obligations on a third party.

A negatory lawsuit is one of classic ways to protect property rights. Despite the large number of research papers devoted to this institution, there is a wide range of opinions in the legal literature regarding the grounds and limits of negatory protection. Thus, there is a widespread point of view, according to which a negatory claim is a way of protecting the right to use and it is applied only if the owner creates obstacles in the use of the thing. This approach is based on the existence of a triad of powers that all together form a subjective right of ownership. However, qualification of a negatory claim as a claim for the protection of the right to use and the possibility of its application only in the case of putting impediments to use is erroneous, since violation of the right is associated only with obstacles to the exercise of the right, since the rights to own, use and dispose of the property determined in the doctrine represent ways of exercising the right and do not reflect the essence of the property right. Meanwhile, violation of the right is not limited to impediments in the exercise of the right. Violation of the property right may include both action and inaction of the debtor, which, in turn, may be of a factual and legal nature. A negatory claim in Russian civil law is a way to protect property rights from a wide range of infringements, but this is not the basis for concluding that such a claim is applied for any violations of property rights. The choice of the method of the right’s protection is determined based on the nature of the subjective right and the offense. A negatory claim has its own conditions for application and should not replace other ways of the right protection.

The paper analyzes amendments in procedural legislation (Federal Law No. 473‑FZ dated 30 December 2021 «On Amendments to Certain Legislative Acts of the Russian Federation») that have been relatively recently introduced into the institution for the revision of judicial acts that entered into force, due to new and newly discovered circumstances. The author points out a fragmentary nature and inconsistency of ideas, mistakes made when making, in fact, a revolutionary decision on the need to grant persons not participating in constitutional proceedings the right to review a previously resolved case. According to the author, adoption of the above changes may radically change the established, also in other legal systems, essential nature of an exceptional and extraordinary mechanism for resuming a case due to new and newly discovered circumstances. It is also noted how this innovation of the legislator may negatively affect the stability of judicial acts (the principle of legal certainty), which in the end may be fraught for such an important legal category as stability in civil law relationships.

Statutory criteria for the protection of copyright objects (the objective form of expression and the presence of the creative work of the author-citizen) are often insufficient when determining the objects of copyright and their differentiation with other objects of civil rights. The courts and law enforcement officers as a whole, are entrusted with a rather difficult creative task here. In this context, an important theoretical and, at the same time, practical tool, namely, linguistic (grammatical) interpretation, is of particular importance. The use of grammatical interpretation in relation to the collective terms «works of science, literature and art» used in the Civil Code of the Russian Federation, in particular in Articles 1225, 1259, seems appropriate due to the lack of sufficient and clear criteria for the protection of copyright objects and the spatial nature of the existing ones.

The paper is devoted to the study of trade practice rules as a way to prevent violations of antitrust laws. The author analyzes scientific and practical approaches to the definition of the concept and content of trade practice rules, as well as corporate procedures for the development and approval of the rules in question, including by business entities that occupy a dominant position in the commodity markets. Trade practice rules should be understood as a corporate document that establishes the procedure for selecting counterparties by an economic entity for concluding contracts for the supply of goods and the essential terms of such contracts in order to minimize the risks of abuse of a dominant position in the commodity market. It was revealed that trade practice rules are developed by economic entities on a voluntary basis to establish non-discriminatory conditions for interaction with counterparties and forcibly on the basis of an order from the antimonopoly authority in order to stop the abuse of a dominant position or prevent restriction of competition in transactions of economic concentration. The latest trends in the application of trade practice rules related to ensuring the priority of deliveries of goods to the domestic market and the rejection of foreign exchange indicators in the pricing of Russian goods are identified.

The paper discusses the relationship between the concepts of «mental health» and «psychological health». Mental health is protected by criminal law as an integral part of human health in general. The scientific uncertainty of the concept of «psychological health» prevents its recognition as an object of crime. At the same time, civil procedure has established a mechanism aimed at compensating the moral harm caused by a crime to the psychological health of the victim. The understanding of human health and its components in criminal law can be judged primarily through the absence of signs of harm to health characterizing criminal acts (Articles 111, 112, 115 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation), among which Art. 111 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation names a mental health impairment‑a mental disorder. The content of harm to health and the criteria for determining the degree of its severity are disclosed in the by-laws: Rules for determining the severity of harm caused to human health, and Medical criteria for determining the severity of harm caused to human health. To understand what a mental disorder is, it is necessary to refer to the current International Classification of Diseases, 10th Revision (ICD‑10). Harm to mental health is expressed in psychopathological disorders of clinical significance and is established in accordance with the ICD diagnostic criteria. The paper also examines the content of such a sign of serious harm to health as a mental disorder. The authors analyze scientific views on the differentiation of mental disorders according to the severity of harm to health, the criteria underlying it, as well as the algorithm of expert research, and express their position on the introduction of such differentiation into criminal law and practice.

The paper examines the practice of imprisonment sentencing in Russia since the early 2000s until 2021. Using diagrams, in the context of the issue under consideration, the structure of the author scrutinizes criminal penalties imposed in Russia at the end of 2021; the number and proportion of those sentenced to imprisonment in Russia in the period from 2003 to 2021. As part of the analysis of the practice of applying imprisonment sentence for certain categories of crimes, the author studies the following: the proportion of those sentenced to real imprisonment for murder in Russia for the period from 2003 to 2021; the share of those sentenced to real imprisonment in the total mass of those convicted for intentionally causing grievous bodily harm in Russia for the period from 2003 to 2021; the number of people convicted of intentionally causing grievous bodily harm; the proportion of those sentenced to imprisonment for aggravated rape in Russia in the period from 2003 to 2021; the number of people convicted of taking bribes in Russia from 2007 to 2021; the structure of punishment for accepting a bribe in Russia in the period from 2007 to 2021. The author draws conclusions about the observed trend of reducing the share of the considered type of punishment from 88% in 2003 to 57% in 2021, achieved mainly by reducing the number of suspended sentences, as well as about the problems of the observed practice of choosing punishment in the form imprisonment for specific offenses. In particular, it is pointed out that it is inadmissible to recognize the practice of imposing imprisonment sentences for intentional infliction of grievous bodily harm as the correct and appropriate position of the legislator, as well as the validity of reducing the frequency of choice of punishment in the form of imprisonment (especially suspended) in relation to persons who received a bribe under aggravating circumstances, including in a significant, large, especially large amount.

The conceptual basis of the prosecutor’s activity on the prevention of offenses in the institutions of the penal system is accounted for the specifics of offenses committed by persons held in them; features of their personality; distinctive features of the causes and conditions for committing offenses in penal institutions; opportunities for prosecutorial supervision in the area under consideration. Timely prevention of disciplinary offenses of convicts makes it possible to effectively counter penitentiary crimes, since both of them encroach on the same object. The basis for the prevention of offenses should be the provision of a strict procedure for serving deprivation of liberty or detention. Carrying out preventive work is complicated by the following factors: high latency and difficulty in proving penitentiary crimes, features of the average profile of a penitentiary criminal, which is a mature man with a stable criminal personality type. Any illegal actions (inaction) of employees of penitentiary institutions can lead to the commission of penitentiary offenses, since all the activities of these institutions are subordinated to the goals of correcting convicts and preventing the commission of new crimes. Timely detection and elimination of violations of the law committed by employees of penitentiary institutions, as well as increasing the level of legal literacy and developing the legal awareness of persons held in penitentiary institutions, constitute the prevention of their offenses, carried out by the prosecutor’s office.

Over two thirds of world trade and production is carried out by multinational corporations and takes place in cross-border supply chains (global value chains). This figure reflects the scale and vastness of the geography of distribution of such systems. Global (cross-border) supply chains have attracted close attention from business and political circles, academic economists and sociologists. However, legal scholars have remained aloof from such debates. The paper is the first to integrate the concept of cross-border supply chains (global value chains) into domestic legal science. From a legal point of view, the supply chain is a multi-level (modular) system of contracts subordinated to a single goal and designed to centralize, organize and coordinate the management of the flow of production, supplies and services in the international business environment. An important feature of such contractual systems is their role as an intermediary in the dissemination of foreign legal norms, norms of non-state regulation, private standards and in the legitimization of socially significant attitudes.

The paper discusses the evolution of private international law analyzing the rules governing crossborder family relations in order to identify the factors influencing the development of international family law at the present stage, and the trends that accompany it. The author concludes that private international law from an apolitical field of legal knowledge about ways to overcome the conflict is turning into a tool of legal policy that can provide an impact on cross-border relations. In the European Union countries, whose international private law has changed beyond recognition over several decades, this influence is especially noticeable. Attention is drawn to the consistent approach of European institutions, which has already significantly expanded the normative structure of international family law. Although international family law in the Russian Federation is subject to change, it is not so dynamic. Nevertheless, the author believes that a change in the status quo is inevitable and cannot but take into account objective factors that lie outside its limits. The transformation of interstate communities requires clarification of the list of the participants, the powers of their institutions to develop the norms of international family law, the territory of such norms; determining the legal outline of the state family policy — an adequate reflection of traditional family values in the rules of conflict law; development of information technologies — improvement of mechanisms for resolving cross-border family disputes.

The sine qua non theory, which dominated for a long time to determine a causation in the French criminal jurisprudence, remains working now. At the same time, the imputation to an individual of consequences caused without intention after the reform of 2000 is made dependent on whether the causation was direct or indirect. In the case of indirect causation, the criminal liability of an individual occurs only in the presence of qualified guilt, which can be either mixed mens rea (knowledge and negligence in one crime), rejected by the Russian doctrine, or a special gravity of acts at the time when they were committed. For Russian jurisprudence, the experience of France can be useful due to the different understanding of causality in the commission of an intentional crime and crimes with other forms of mens rea, and also in the context that the sine qua non theory is insufficient to determine the imputable causation. The opportunity implemented in France to regulate the issue of causation by legislative means is also of theoretical and practical interest.

The paper considers the restrictions on the movement and parking of vehicles in water protection zones established by the Russian legislation in terms of their compliance with the goals of protecting water bodies from pollution and maintaining the quality of water resources favorable for humans, as well as the compliance of the established restrictions with the principle of proportionality. The author proves the presence of legislative defects that prevent the achievement of the above goals of legal regulation. Such defects are: 1) the uncertainty of the concept of «vehicle», which makes it possible to refer to them as means of individual mobility that have an insignificant impact on the environment; 2) lack of consideration of the need to organize the transportation of passengers and the delivery of goods to residents of buildings located in water protection zones, access roads which do not have a hard surface; 3) lack of consideration of the need to organize the movement of vehicles in the winter on seasonal roads (winter roads). According to the author, the identified defects reduce the effectiveness of the established restrictions and create high corruption risks. The author formulated proposals for improving Russian legislation.