The paper examines the term «interaction» updated in the process of the 2020 Constitutional Reform. The author analyzes the constitutional model of the interaction implementation in the Constitution of Russia, federal legislation and constitutional (statutory) legislation of the constituent entities of the Federation. Based on the comparative legal analysis, the paper explains the features of interaction in the unified system of public authorities at various levels, the features of goal-setting and types and forms of interaction. The author concludes that different goal-setting of interaction in the legislation of constituent entities, on the one hand, allows taking into account the characteristic features, on the other hand, it implies differences in the forms and procedures of its implementation and subjects of interaction. The author proposes the system-forming elements of a unified system of public authorities. It is revealed that in the acts of the constituent entities under consideration, it is mainly about interaction in the system of state power, whereas the constitutional formulations at the federal level also concern local self-government bodies. According to the author, this narrowing of the subjects of interaction carries obvious risks of improper enforcement of federal legislation. The author also concludes that interaction is more widely regulated at the level of the constituent entities of the federation, determines the goals and subjects of the process, defines the features of interaction and promising aspects for incorporation into the legislation of the constituent entities.

Elections and referendums are the main ways of free expression of the will of Russian citizens concerning political and other issues of importance to society. The significance of these forms of citizen participation in the life of Russian society presupposes the existence of legislative mechanisms for their regulation. At the same time, the introduction of modern technologies that make it possible to exclude the possibility of falsifications and other violations of election and referendum procedures is of particular importance. Video surveillance is one of the digital technologies that can increase the confidence of citizens in these methods of their free expression. The paper is devoted to constitutional law regulation of the use of digital technologies in video surveillance over elections and referendums. The paper considers in detail a set of regulatory and legal sources, on the basis of which the use of video surveillance systems in voting premises at polling stations is regulated. The author analyzes legislative acts that explain the specifics of the use of video surveillance during elections and referendums, mainly federal laws, as well as resolutions of the Central Election Commission of the Russian Federation. In conclusion, the author dwells on the prospects and effectiveness of the use of modern digital technologies in the implementation of video surveillance over the course of elections and referendums.

In 2020, as a result of the Reform, the rule of law on mutual trust between the State and the people was enshrined in the Constitution of the Russian Federation, while the instrument for determining such trust, the frequency of its assessment, as well as issues of regulation and development of trust remain undisclosed.

In conducting this research, the author aimed to examine the process of the emergence and development of the phenomenon of «trust» from the Soviet period to the present day, to conduct a comparative legal analysis of Soviet, foreign and modern Russian legislation, to assess the impact of the institution of citizens’ appeals on increasing trust, to determine the role of citizens’ appeals in the process of forming mutual trust and in ensuring constitutional law and order. It is difficult to overestimate the role of citizens’ appeals in maintaining trust in public authorities and in ensuring constitutional law and order; the analysis of the array of citizens’ appeals will not only allow replacing public opinions necessary for assessing trust, but it is also able to provide their high-quality and free replacement, with a wide involvement of citizens. The paper highlights a special role of the institution of citizens’ appeals in preventing protest moods, the relationship of trust with faith in God, as well as the ability of trust to neutralize the imperfection of legislation.

On the eve of the 30th Anniversary of the Constitution of Russia, the author makes an attempt to evaluate the Russian basic law, the content of the norms enshrined in the Constitution for their compliance with traditional values, i.e., spirituality, conciliarity, and civilizational identity inherent in the peoples of Russia. The anniversary date makes it possible to comprehend the meaning of traditional values, their reflection in the basic laws of the Russian State adopted in different historical periods. The author examines approaches to the concept of constitutional (constitutionally significant, constitutionally protected) values expressed in the legal standings of the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation. The author elucidates various interpretations of the concept of «constitutional values» in the works of modern researchers, proves their relationship with the concept of «traditional values.» The conclusion is substantiated that only the goals, principles and priorities that are based on traditional values will be provided with popular support and will be able to become real prospects for constitutional development.

The paper, based on the analysis of research works of famous modern and pre-revolutionary constitutional scholars, philosophers, as well as the provisions of the Constitution of Russia, current legislation and law enforcement practice, shows the problems of sustainable development of Russia arising from the excessive reliance of mankind on environment and the global intensification of socio-economic development. The author determines new prospects for their resolution implementing the provisions of the Amendment included in the Constitution of the Russian Federation in 2020 and devoted to the ideals of our ancestors and faith in God as the basis of sustainable development, which are based on spiritual and moral values tested in practice by our ancestors during many centuries of the national statehood. Special attention is paid to the examination of the interaction and interrelation between the norms of religion, morality and law in creating a qualitative basis for sustainable development through the unity and social solidarity of the man, state institutions and civil society in ensuring the continuity of the statehood of Russia.

The paper analyzes the opinions of researchers concerning the concept and types of functions of the Constitution of the Russian Federation and their features. The author explains her approach to the classification of the functions of the Constitution. The paper considers the content of the functions of the Constitution and their dynamism, taking into account the change of ideals and priorities in the State and society. Special attention is paid to the specific function of the Constitution — the constituent one. The author raises the question of whether it is possible to assert that the norms-principles of the Constitution have their own functions, since they define an ideal basic model of relations that is implemented through concrete actions. It is concluded that the regulatory and protective functions will be revealed through regulations specifying and detailing these principles. The author explains the ideological function of the Constitution that determines the moral and value patterns of human behavior, the authorities’ activities. All values enshrined in the Constitution find their expression in the ideological function of the Constitution.

The paper deals with topical issues of legal regulation of the status of the President of the Russian Federation as a party to the constitutional judicial procedure, provides a detailed analysis of his constitutional procedural legal capacity. It is shown that the President of the Russian Federation can be both the applicant and can act on the side of the entity the constitutionality of the actions of which is disputed. The relevance of the study of the procedural standing of the President of the Russian Federation in the framework of constitutional proceedings is substantiated by the significant transformation of the status of the Head of State as a result of the Constitutional Reform of 2020. The paper analyzes legislative novelties that significantly expanded the procedural rights of the Head of State through the inclusion of new powers related to the appeal to the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation. When assessing the role of the President of the Russian Federation as a party to the constitutional judicial procedure, it is concluded that there is a shift in the balance in the system of separation of powers in favor of the Head of State. This is especially evident when analyzing the President’s procedural status in cases of preliminary norm control.

The paper analyzes the actual content of the interdisciplinary concept «scientific and educational space of the Russian Federation», since the ongoing changes in the educational sphere of the Russian state, due to the new realities of the country’s foreign and domestic policy, require scientific justification and understanding. The author determines the tendencies of the development of the educational system of Russia. As a result of the study, it was revealed that the unity of society, the level of its interaction with the State, ideology and culture, being the sides of socio-political formation, are directly dependent on the level of the internal scientific and educational policy of each civilized country. The author concludes that it is necessary to continue using the full potential of the scientific and educational space to unite society, preserve the unity of the general cultural space of the State, prevent national-ethnic conflicts and social tension, taking as an alternative basis the priority of individual rights and minimizing social inequality in order to strengthen the national security of the sovereign Russian state. An urgent component of the vigorous development of Russian civil society should be the state policy in the youth sphere, based on creating conditions for the broad implementation of the potential of young citizens in generating their own future and the future of the sovereign Russian state.

The paper analyzes the recent constitutional reforms in Russia, Belarus, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, and Uzbekistan. The constitutional reform that took place in the Russian Federation in 2020 marked the beginning of such reforms in some countries of the Commonwealth of Independent States. It is noted that mainly amendments to the constitutions of the listed states concerned the political-territorial structure and historical development of states; spiritual and cultural sphere; redistribution of powers between government bodies; legal status of the individual. It is concluded that the vectors of constitutional reforms in the considered states generally have similar directions. This fact can be associated with the Concept of further development of the CIS, which enshrines the goal of systematic convergence of the national legislations of the member states of the Commonwealth in many areas of cooperation. Thus, without a unified direction for improving constitutions, it is impossible to achieve such goals.

The paper examines the significance of the Constitution of the Russian Federation in the formation and development of the political and legal essence of local self-government and its driving force as to strengthen municipal power as a type of public power that ensures the implementation  of certain laws and municipal regulations on the territory municipalities. The author believes that it is only after the adoption of the Russian Constitution in 1993 that local self-government has acquired the constitutional potential for its formation as an authoritative channel for expressing the will of the people, both directly and through local government bodies. The paper shows the role of the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation in the implementation of the constitutional idea of the power essence of local self-government and its consolidation in the current legislation. At the same time, according to the author, there are no sufficient grounds to conclude that the idea of the authoritative essence of local self-government is fully implemented in legislation. Believing it necessary to further strengthen the municipal government, the author makes proposals, the implementation of which will contribute to solving this pressing problem.

The paper analyzes the main legal positions of the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation since the 1990s until 2023 on the organization and functioning of public authority in Russia in the context of the theory of the «living» Constitution of Russia. To expand on the topic the author dwells upon the legal positions of the constitutional control body as an explanation of the norms of the Russian Constitution, which influences the law-making process and law enforcement practice. Based on the analysis of judicial acts, the main constitutional characteristics of public power are determined: inclusion of municipal government in its composition (the presence of organizational isolation of local government bodies with their functional unity with state power); continuous functioning and historical succession of public power; exercise of public power at the level of the Federation, constituent entities of the Federation, municipalities with the inadmissibility of violating each other’s competence by these levels. It is noted that the main task of state building may be to bring the activities of public authorities closer to the forms of democracy, as well as the development of their direct connections through public discussions between public authorities and the people, society, and citizens.

The paper is devoted to one of the most effective, but rarely used in practice, special methods of protecting the violated rights of the personal data subject in relation to gardeners, aimed at restoring violated rights and freedoms through appealing against the actions and/or inaction of a non-public operator. The purpose of the paper is to analyze the provisions of Art. 17 of the Federal Law of July 27, 2006 No. 152-FZ «On Personal Data» by means of the formal legal method and linguistic (grammatical) method of interpretation. It aims at not only giving a general description of this special method of protection, but also formulating the conditions for the gardener to exercise the right to judicial appeal against the actions/inactions of a non-public operator from the standpoint of the objective and subjective elements of the rule of law. The paper will be useful primarily for practicing lawyers and attorneys involved in the protection of the violated rights of gardeners — personal data subjects, whose garden land plots are located on the territory of closed dacha villages established on land plots appearing from land shares.

Amid current development of innovations and technologies, academic staff, including research officers of educational institutions of higher education and research officers of research institutions play a key role in the creation of intellectual property. It is because man creates the results of intellectual activity, and academic staff of educational institutions, researchers in research institutions are, in the designated context, special subjects involved in the processes of creating intellectual property, mainly on a regular basis. Academic staff of educational institutions and researchers in educational and research institutions in a certain sense seem to be the weak side. Often, educational and research institutions in employment contracts and local regulatory legal acts establish conditions that the corresponding institutions are automatically the copyright holders of exclusive rights to intellectual property created by the faculty and researchers. Publishers that publish scientific works of the faculty and researchers often impose the transfer of exclusive rights free of charge, without paying remuneration to the authors. In this context, the paper proposes measures to develop models for the protection of intellectual property rights of the academic staff and researchers, as well as solving a number of problems related to ensuring the rights and interests of this category of authors.

The paper attempts to explore the complex of patent legal terms as a separate group of terms in civil law through the prism of the elements that make up this set. The classification was carried out in two stages. At the first stage, taking into account the approaches developed in the science of civil law, seven bases of division and the features of their application to patent legal terms are considered. At the second stage, five additional grounds for dividing patent legal terms into groups are proposed. The analysis of the elements identified as a result of the classification made it possible to formulate conclusions about the features of urgent regulation of patent-legal relations: a high degree of certainty and at the same time flexibility of temporary regulation; about the absence of certain deadlines and the presence of specific groups of deadlines in connection with the peculiarities of the subject of regulation of patent law and the focus of patent legislation on the creation of favorable conditions for scientific, scientific-technical and other types of creative activities.

The paper examines the Anglo-Saxon and continental approaches to understanding the principle of the presumption of innocence. It is concluded that in Russia this principle was established and implemented in the spirit of continental legal logic. The effect of the presumption of innocence and the provisions arising from it (the principle of in dubio pro reo, the rule that the accused is not obliged to prove his innocence, etc.) when considering a criminal case by a Russian court with the participation of jurors is examined. The features of evidence in this form of legal proceedings, the relationship of the presumption of innocence with the right of jurors to find the defendant innocent if it is fully proven that they committed a criminal act (criminal law nullification) are considered. The conclusion is substantiated that it is in a trial with a jury that the presumption of innocence is most fully realized; it contains additional guarantees of its strict observance.

The paper considers the problem of transition to more environmentally friendly arbitration, which involves reducing the carbon footprint left by arbitration proceedings through the adoption of three main measures: 1) the use of renewable energy; 2) reducing or eliminating long-distance travel and air travel for the purposes of arbitration proceedings; 3) reducing waste and eliminating the use of paper documents. An important role in achieving this goal is taken by green protocols containing specific practical measures to ensure sustainability and environmental protection, addressed to certain participants in the arbitration community (arbitrators, law firms, service providers and arbitration centers), as well as initiatives of the arbitration centers themselves. However, given the advisory nature of the green protocols adopted as part of the Campaign for Greener Arbitration, as well as the possibility of derogation from the provisions of the arbitration rules providing for the transition to electronic document flow and online hearings, parties concerned about protecting the environment are recommended to include (or arbitration agreement) special green clauses.

The paper is devoted to the study of legal regulation of the capture and burial of CO₂ in rock layers. The technology for capturing and storing CO₂ is extremely relevant today in the fight against climate change. The paper explores the differences in the legal regulation of carbon capture and storage technologies and carbon capture, use and storage using the example of foreign countries, and also presents a possible model for implementation in the legislation of the Russian Federation. The author in this study analyzes the conditions under which licensing of underground CO₂ storage occurs.