On the basis of published and unpublished documents, the authors explain changes in the social significance and the role of the Soviet law and socialist legal awareness in the Soviet state in the context of transition from revolutionary to socialist legality during the first decade of Soviet power. The negative impact of a low level of legal technique of the first Soviet laws on law enforcement resulted in the need to adopt additional departmental acts to implement them and the widespread use of socialist legal awareness in legal practice. The most multifaceted law enforcement role of the socialist legal consciousness was manifested in the activities of the people’s courts. The law enforcement role analysis made it possible to establish the mutual influence of Soviet laws and socialist legal consciousness. The Soviet law was an authoritative guide to the socialist legal consciousness, which, in turn, became the key to understanding the laws and their application by analogy in conditions of frequent changes in government policy.
Using the example of the Soviet legal practice of 1917–1928, the authors conclude that the legal and technical inconsistency of laws leads to the emergence of new regulators and the erasure of the legal limits of discretionary powers of authorities. The authors substantiate that the Soviet government used the socialist legal consciousness to strengthen the mechanism of the Soviet state, to create in its structure a flexible tool for correcting rapidly outdating unsettled legislation.

The paper is devoted to analyzing the impact of somatic biotechnologies on the system of social values of modern society. In the paper «somatic» refers to such technologies that relate to the genetic modification of the human body or its functional systems carried out in various ways. The authors attempt to analyze the main directions of transformation of social institutions of modern Russian society, taking into account advantages and disadvantages of the new technological revolution. Attention is drawn to the risks that biotechnologies pose to society and the state as a whole. The authors substantiate the necessity of participation of the state and various social groups in the development of an optimal strategy reflecting the interests of all stakeholders, based on transparency and trust. The paper indicates that it is necessary to determine the levels of permissible human exposure to various concomitant factors when using biotechnologies. This will require a normative rethinking of the entire concept of human and civil rights and freedoms enshrined in the Constitution of the Russian Federation that includes the right to life, its values, the principles of the inalienable fundamental human rights and freedoms, their belonging to everyone from birth, the right to privacy, the right to personal and family secrets, dignity and good name.
It is important at the regulatory level to consolidate the legal regime of genetic data about a person in the system of social values, prohibit discrimination based on genetic uniqueness, and develop requirements for medical organizations using somatic biotechnologies. The resolution of future problems involves a theoretical rethinking and normative regulation of new forms of work that will appear in the future, as well as new types of property. The ideas of motherhood and childhood, as well as families, will require new content, which will affect the most important values of society and demand active involvement of the state.

The paper highlights foundations and development of the doctrine of strategic and dialogical constitutionalism in the context of the crisis of the modern world order and constitutional and legal thinking. Strategic constitutionalism and the strategy of constitutional changes are considered as the most important development paradigm that ensures the progress and diversification of models of modern constitutionalism. The paper explains the factors of conceptualization of constitutional changes, dwells on the state as a constitutional strategy and a strategy for diversifying constitutionalism in the world, the dilemmas of legal constitutionalism and forecasting constitutional changes from the standpoint of academic and expert opinion, academic discussions concerning the purpose and role of dialogical constitutionalism and citizens’ participation in constitutional changes, some strategies for constitutional changes in Russia and Europe, prospects for improvement of institutions of popular participation, the institute of professional and expert opinion in the Russian constitutional doctrine and legislation. The paper employs deliberative and epistemological approaches, methods of formal-legal, concretehistorical, comparative constitutional-legal and complex analysis.

The paper analyzes main approaches to the legal regulation of the digital ruble. The authors examine in detail the history and reasons for the introduction of digital currencies of central banks, the features of digital currencies of central banks, the features of the digital ruble as an object of civil law regulation. The paper concludes that the full-scale use of the digital ruble will depend not only on the formal indication of the digital ruble as a legally recognized method of fulfilling a civil obligation, but also on the recognition and provision of an actual possibility of using the digital ruble as a means of fulfilling public legal obligations, primarily obligations arising from tax relations. Such recognition will require amendments to the budget and tax legislation, as well as changes in the operation mode of the Federal Treasury of the Russian Federation. The question of how disputes and disagreements between the participants of relations arising in connection with the introduction of the digital ruble will be resolved requires careful consideration.

The paper is devoted to the study of the digital ruble as a legal means of payment and examination of the categories of the monetary item and monetary unit. The author objects to an unjustified use of the term «currency» in the law on digital financial assets and academic writings and expresses doubts about the emergence of a new type of civil rights — a digital right. In this regard, the paper raises the problem of «defect of the content» of the legislative act. The digital ruble is considered as a kind of a fiat currency. The author justifies that a legal means of payment can be represented by both cash and non-cash money. The author proves that the regime of the digital ruble as a legal means of payment represents a system of rules providing for the issuance by the Bank of Russia on behalf of the state of a means of payment in the form of a digital banknote accepted at face value on the territory of the Russian Federation to repay any monetary obligations, and servicing all transactions in the digital ruble.

The paper provides a general description of the contractual standards of the International Capital Markets Association (ICMA) for concluding and executing over-the-counter repo agreements and focuses on the GMRA 2011 — the most relevant standard agreement of this Association. The author underlines insufficiency of international unification of legal regulation in the field of securities markets, which leads to the need for contractual unification by the participants of such markets themselves. The paper consistently examines general characteristics of the repo agreement, work of the Association in preparing standard documentation, the mechanism of a crossborder repo agreement in accordance with the GMRA 2011 agreement. It is noted that the provisions of this agreement on the procedure for concluding individual repo transactions are highly flexible, and the rights of a party in case of violation of the agreement are protected using the liquidation netting mechanism. The advantages of using ICMA documentation include the availability of country applications that bring it into line with the requirements of local legislation in certain countries, as well as regular updating of standard contracts. Successful application of GMRA 2011 in transactions with Russian counterparties is facilitated by its recognition by the Russian regulator as approximate terms of the repo agreement, a special country application, and translation of the agreement into Russian. In the context of sanctions pressure and the presence of Russian anti-sanctions, the possibility of using the GMRA agreement in transactions with counterparties from «unfriendly» countries seems difficult. However, ICMA documentation can still be used for repo transactions with parties incorporated in other regions, making it possible to refocus the Russian financial sector to Asian markets.

The paper is devoted to considering the issue of the method of legal regulation of bankruptcy relations in the Russian Federation and the nature of this method. The paper examines the problem of implementing the method of encouragement, primarily in the context of bankruptcy procedures applied to citizens. The method of encouragement is considered through the prism of implementation of bankruptcy legislation in specific norms, providing incentives for a particular behavior approved by society and the state, which is expressed in an encouraging sanction. In this regard, the paper highlights that the current legislation on insolvency (bankruptcy) not only contains almost no encouraging norms, but also, in general, it does not employ even dispositive (nonmandatory) methods of legal regulation. In fact, only creditors have true dispositivity (discretion) today, but not the arbitration administrator, and even more, not the debtor, for whom the legislator provides only duties and prohibitions. From the above, it is concluded that the existing legal regulation of bankruptcy relations is the quintessence of the imperative method. Paradoxically, the author proposes to look for an alternative to this imperative in the field of criminal justice. The author highlights that many criminal law and criminal procedure phenomena, such as confession and active repentance, can be transferred to the sphere of bankrupt legal relations and they can increase the effectiveness of their legal regulation. In particular, this will help to ensure the principle of voluntary cooperation between the debtor and the finance manager. In conclusion, the author proposes to introduce the method of encouragement in the field of insolvency by analogy with criminal justice.

The relevance of researching the issue of the parent’s right to upbringing a child using a comparative historical and legal method can be explained by the fact that criteria still used by courts to resolve disputes about determining the place of residence of a child when parents are separated were developed in the Soviet times. The system of criteria for resolving cases concerning foster care in Soviet law enforcement practice began to be actively formed in 1928 due to participation of child custody and guardianship authorities in such cases. However, the system of such criteria was not fixed in the marital and family codes of the RSFSR. The lack of these criteria in the legislation allowed the courts to resolve disputes concerning child custody without analyzing them and without taking them into account. It was only in the post-Soviet period that an approximate system of such criteria was enshrined in the Family Code of the Russian Federation. In most cases, when resolving a dispute concerning the place of residence of a child (child custody) parents also ask to determine the schedule of communication between a separate parent and a child. In 2018, the law-enforcer made a serious evolutionary leap in determining the schedule of communication between a separate parent and a child. The Supreme Court of the Russian Federation faces a legal dilemma. On the one hand, the Court demonstrates respect for equality of parents’ rights to upbringing a child. On the other hand, it must take into account the child’s interest in the stability of the place of residence. The court resolved the dilemma in favor of the interests of the child. The paper provides proposals for improving family legislation in order to take into account the specified law enforcement experience of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation.

The paper examines specific features of contractual mechanisms considering trade and corporate agreements. The author compares trade and corporate agreements and reveals the nature of a corporate agreement; determines the conditions of its conclusion and validity; outlines some problems associated with its conclusion and implementation. It is concluded that a corporate agreement has significant specific feature distinguishing it from trade agreements. The current trend in business practice towards strengthening the role of a corporate agreement as a regulator is analyzed. Emphasis is placed on a number of issues that require attention when developing this position: requirements for the form, subject and conditions of a corporate agreement, the relationship between corporate and quasi-corporate agreements, disclosure of information about a corporate agreement, ensuring proper execution of the agreement, application of rules on business agreements. Within the framework of the position classifying a corporate agreement as an entrepreneurial agreement, the author express a point of view that a corporate agreement is a business contract regardless of its parties.

The increase in the number of conflict situations that arise when athletes and coaches are transfered to other employers is due, among other things, to the lack of a unified theoretical approach to the definition of this concept and, therefore, the delimitation of sports transfers from related phenomena. At present, a relatively small number of scientific works are devoted to the classification of sports transfer, which seems to be a significant gap in the theoretical understanding of sports transfers that needs to be filled. The paper proposes a classification of sports transfers depending on the type of jurisdiction to which the subjects of the sports transfer belong (national and international); the period of its implementation (permanent and temporary; its subjects (transfers of athletes and coaches). Some types can be distinguished between from the point of view of forms of labor regulation sports transfer: a) transitions (transfers) based on termination of the employment contract concluded with the previous employer in the manner established by paragraphs 3, 4 of Art. 77 of the Labor Code of the Russian Federation, Article 80 of the Labor Code of the Russian Federation, and on concluding a new employment contract with a new employer; b) transitions (transfers) involving the termination of an employment contract by agreement of the parties (clause 1 of Article 77 of the Labor Code of the Russian Federation) with the subsequent conclusion of an employment contract with another employer; c) transitions (transfers) in the order of transferring an employee to work for another employer (clause 5 of Article 77 of the Labor Code of the Russian Federation); d) transitions (transfers) in the order of temporary transfer of an athlete to another employer in the manner established by Article 348.4 of the Labor Code of the Russian Federation. The absence of reasons for identifying a sports transfer with a change of sports citizenship is substantiated.

The author analyzes the acts of the courts of first, appellate and cassation instances and identifies shortcomings regarding the application of Part 6 of Art. 15 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation. It is noted that all defects should be divided into several groups: 1) inadequate, incomplete justification for decisions to change the category of crime or to refuse it; 2) lack of motivation for such decisions; 3) ignoring the consideration of the issue of changing the category of crime; 4) violation of the procedure for changing the category of crime; 5) imposing a court fine after changing the category of the crime; 6) changing the category of crime in the presence of formal obstacles; 7) failure to take into account changes in consequences following a change in the category of crime; 8) taking into account the same circumstances when applying Part 6 of Art. 15 and Art. 64, 73 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation; 9) other errors (in particular, discussion of the issue of changing the category of a crime of minor gravity). The explanations of the Plenum of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation are assessed and proposals are put forward to improve law enforcement practice.

Failure to enforce a criminal sentence is traditionally viewed through the prism of the responsibility of the one who ensures enforcement of a sentence and the one to whom the sentence is assigned for enforcement. Meanwhile, criminal and penal legislation provides for a number of situations when the imposed sentence is not carried out based on considerations of expediency. Such a failure to enforce may be complete or partial, conditional or unconditional. This practice is quite common in law enforcement. Attention is given to the imperfection of legislation on the failure to enforce a sentence, to fundamental inaccuracies in its application in practice, and proposals are made to improve criminal law policy in this direction.

The issues of accusation have always attracted the attention of both law enforcement officials and scientists. In the modern Russian criminal procedural legislation, the accusation has undergone changes, but its essence and significance do not lose relevance and still attract the attention of scientists and practitioners. This is due to the development of the adversarial principle, under which the function of the prosecution must be separated from the function of the defense. The use of information technology should guarantee the collection of not only incriminating, but also exculpatory evidence, based on the purpose of criminal proceedings. In this regard, questions are being considered about the possible development of the institution of accusation in the conditions of digitalization. Of particular interest is the analysis of legislation taking into account its development in retrospect. Studying the positive legislative experience of some foreign countries is also of some interest, since this experience can be used to improve Russian legislation.

The paper examines debatable issues of content when considering in cassation proceedings caused by incorrect application of significant violations of the criminal law and significant violations of the criminal procedural law that influenced the outcome of the case. The types of violations of criminal and criminal procedural laws that are recognized by the courts as significant and influencing the outcome of the criminal case are shown. It is substantiated that the grounds established in the law for the court of cassation for canceling and changing a sentence that has entered into legal force do not contain any uncertainty and are interpreted uniformly by courts of general jurisdiction. Identifying significant violations of the criminal and criminal procedural law that influenced the outcome of the case, the cassation court is obliged to check if lower courts comply with the requirements of the criminal procedural law on establishing the factual circumstances of the criminal case, the requirements of the procedural form, the correct application of the criminal law when qualifying the actions of the defendant, the requirements of the criminal the law on the fairness of the imposed punishment, the correctness of resolving issues of compensation for damage caused by a crime, the correctness of determining the type and amount of punishment, the type and regime of a correctional institution, fulfillment of the requirements for a court decision, etc. It is concluded that checking the legality of a sentence or other court decision involves checking its validity, motivation and fairness, without which it is impossible to determine the correct application of criminal and criminal procedural law by the courts.

The paper examines a range of issues related to the influence of the level of training and competence of the expert on the quality and timeliness of forensic fire safety and technical expertise. The current state of the specifics of such a training in educational institutions at Forensic Expertise Programs (Engineering and Technical Expertise specialization) is analyzed. The authors propose some recommendations and ways to solve some problems in this regard. The authors believe that the current state of training of fire technical experts requires some changes. This is due to many factors, for example, an increase in the range of tasks to be solved, the emergence of new specializations (subtypes of forensic fire safety and technical examination), the introduction of new technologies and expert equipment, reengineering of scientific and methodological support for the activities of a fire safety and technical expert, etc. In the paper, the authors pay special attention to the criteria for selecting applicants to universities and the features of training future experts. It is proposed to make some changes to the regulatory documents for the preparation (training) of fire safety and technical experts at Forensic Expertise Programs (Engineering and Technical Expertise specialization).

The paper is devoted to the analysis of investigative situations that may arise at different stages of the investigation of a crime under Article 273 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation: creation, distribution and use of malicious software. Based on the data presented, the opinions of scientists and scientific literature, the need for a more precise study of the circumstances under which this or that investigative situation is considered at the initial and subsequent stages of the investigation was identified, since there are a huge number of combinations of circumstances. In this regard, we propose to highlight certain types of circumstances of investigative situations that arise at the initial and subsequent stages of the investigation, describe possible options for their forms and then, based on the tasks that arise for the investigator and law enforcement agencies in connection with them, describe recommended actions that could allow you to solve problems during the preliminary investigation and achieve a legal decision within the framework of the preliminary investigation.

The paper is devoted to the study of the views on the problem of the influence of a fundamental change in circumstances on the operation of treaties that existed in the science of international law before the adoption of the Vienna Convention on the Law of International Treaties of 1969. The author analyzes the following approaches, common in international legal science, to the problem of applying the rebus sic stantibus clause in interstate contractual practice: its unconditional support; her denial; recognition of the admissibility of using a clause in the presence of a number of conditions.
Based on the study of special scientific literature, conclusions are drawn regarding the validity and acceptability of each of the approaches, which to a certain extent contributes to a proper understanding of the true meaning of the current conventional norm on the impact of a fundamental change in circumstances on international treaties. An analysis of the first approach, which assumes the right of any of the states party to the treaty to refuse to implement it in the event of such a change in circumstances that seriously affects the fundamental rights of this state, leads to the conclusion that in the absence of clear criteria for the use of a clause, it is almost impossible to reliably answer the question of whether after a change in circumstances, the implementation of the contract will threaten the fundamental rights of the state. The denial of the rebus sic stantibus clause was argued either by challenging its legal essence or by stating its inconsistency with the principle of pacta sunt servanda. The third approach, which is the most realistic, won approval at the UN Vienna Conference on the Law of Treaties and was normatively enshrined in the Vienna Convention of 1969, which ultimately made it possible to remove uncertainty regarding the impact of a fundamental change in circumstances on the operation of international treaties.