. The paper analyzes the civilizational sources of European legal culture. The relevance of the subject matter can be explained by the complex dynamics of the European cultural tradition that is currently undergoing a transformation. The involvement of various cultural flows in the genesis of the legal essence of Europe complicates the understanding of the modern cultural identity of European law. An important motive for the study was to clarify the place of the Slavic historical tradition of law in the European cultural space. The genesis of the European legal tradition is considered on the basis of the features of the Greco-Roman civilization. The Authors have characterized the features and spiritual (religious) sources of further development of European law, namely: Christianity and Islam. The study also highlights typological legal correlations. It explains the features of the European legal mentality and concludes that a special type of European legal consciousness was formed in the Middle Ages. It combines religious, mental, state-secular and folk elements. The authors draw a conclusion on heterogeneity of the civilizational elements of the European legal culture, the inclusion of various civilizational flows in it — Greco-Roman, Christian (Western and Eastern churches), Muslim and Jewish.

The paper outlines the contours of the split of European legal consciousness in the Middle Ages based on the rupture of the Western and Eastern churches; explains the legal meaning of some elements of doctrinal practice. It provides a civilizational characteristic of the Slavic legal culture, its anti-rationalism and a special type of procedural thinking. It shows the significance of Muslim culture in the development of the European legal tradition; reveals the historical features of the judicial-customary type of European legal civilization. Based on the historical analysis of the formation of the European legal tradition, the authors summarize modern trends in the new integration of European legal identity.

The possibility of judicial challenge of regulatory legal acts (Chapter 21 of the Code of Administrative Judicial Procedure of the Russian Federation (CAJP RF), Chapter 23 of the Administrative Procedure Code of the Russian Federation (APC RF) is an important guarantee of the rule of law regime, ensuring the rule of law in a democratic rule-of-law state. The provisions of procedural codes are generally quite balanced. Focusing on the requirements of legal technique, it is possible to offer more accurate versions of procedural rules in at least four directions. First, Part 7 of Article 213 of the CAJP RF defines the content of the activity aimed at challenging normative regulatory acts. Almost the same wording can be used to improve the wording of Part 4 of Article 194 of the APC RF. Second, it is advisable to check the regulatory nature of the acts containing explanations of legislation and having regulatory properties, not at the stage of litigation, but at the stage of initiating proceedings in the case. This procedure is envisaged for the main legal institution: when challenging regulatory legal acts, their normative nature is checked at the stage of initiating a case. Third, it is necessary to eliminate the legal error made in Paragraph 2 Part 5 Article 217.1 of the CAJP RF and in Paragraph 1 Part 5 Article 195.1 of APC RF: if the court rejects to satisfy the claims, the proposed wording of the court decision on the contested act «does not have normative properties,» since this makes it impossible to challenge it in accordance with Chapter 21 of the CAJP of the Russian Federation, Chapter 23 of the APC of the Russian Federation. Fourth, procedural codes should provide for the possibility of invalidating not only the normative legal or legal interpretation act in whole or in part, but also its individual provisions in whole or in part.

The paper is devoted to the study of problems associated with the formation of new financial institutions of BRICS. Based on the results of the study, a number of conclusions were made. First, the emergence of the BRICS New Development Bank will allow participating countries to finance and lend to their programs and entire sectors of the economy on a transparent and equal financial basis avoiding the discriminatory and biased approach used in the current international monetary system based on the US dollar. Second, this institute will contribute to solving a complex issue of the form of settlements within the BRICS between its member states. Along with this, the study justifies the need for settlements in national currency, which is objectively due to existing, as well as developing trade relations, the structure of export-import operations and an increase in investment activity of the BRICS member states. The author justifies the idea of creating a future BRICS’ R5 currency, uniting regional currencies on a platform that allows connecting the largest emerging markets of these countries. In the future, this will expand the scope of R5 circulation, nominate loans (bonds) in R5, accumulate it in the reserves of the BRICS countries, etc. The BRICS financial institutions that have already been establishe and are still being created, taking into account positive and negative experience, increase confidence in this association in the world; indicate significant potential, making it attractive to other jurisdictions; make it possible to increase its influence on the creation of an alternative monetary world financial system.

The concept of technological development of the Russian Federation until 2030, approved by order of the Government of 20.05.2023 No. 1315-r, provided for the emergence of new subjects of technological development — technological holdings. The first technological holdings are planned to be created on the basis of the Skolkovo foundation. Financing of their activities is entrusted to the state corporation «VEB.RF» that was authorised to make risky (venture) investments. The paper analyzes the prospects for interaction between technology holdings and innovative development institutions. It is concluded that in the context of the isolation of the Russian technological market and the fall in venture capital investments, financing of technology holdings by development institutions may have a positive effect. However, it is necessary to avoid repeating the negative experience of directing public funds to the development of startups. To do this, venture capital investments should use public-private partnership mechanisms. It seems that the participation of private capital will provide an independent assessment of the attractiveness of investment projects and reduce the risks of losing invested funds. It is noted that the use of state funds to finance the activities of technological holdings is not the only task of the state. Today, the created technological holdings run the risk of being in a situation of legal uncertainty. Thus, it is necessary to develop and adopt regulations governing their activities. The state should also ensure the development of the infrastructure of the Russian technological market and the venture capital market. Infrastructure creation is a function of innovative development institutions. The attractiveness of participation in the activities of technological holdings can be increased by the state providing benefits and preferences to the participants.

In civil circulation, due to its digitalization, virtual objects that, unlike a real object of the surrounding world in its usual sense, have a digital form wihout a real shell, are widespread. The civil law regime of virtual objects is not defined in the current legislation. Meanwhile, in the context of the development of metaverse concepts, this problem and the search for ways to solve it is becoming increasingly urgent. Determining the legal regime of objects created by the user of the platform on which access to virtual reality is provided, augmented reality objects, as well as objects existing and created within the metaverse, where the user’s usual activities can be carried out, is ambiguous in scholarship and jurisprudence. This study was undertaken to determine the features of the civil law regime of objects created in virtual reality, augmented reality, and in the metaverse. It was concluded that the regimes of familiar civil law objects (property, results of intellectual activity, intangible benefits, services) can be extended to the objects under consideration. However, the material legal concept does not fully reflect the legal nature of the objects under study. Therefore, virtual objects that copy things of the physical world, in essence, can be recognized as other property rights. At the same time, the intellectual property rules can be applied to these objects only if they are created as a result of a person’s creative efforts.

In recent years, with the intensive development and spread of biotechnology, there has been more and more discussion about the need to define and apply the principles of bioethics to regulate various legal relations, including the relations that go beyond traditional areas, such as supervision and control of biological research. The provisions of Part IV of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation prohibit patenting and state registration of the results of intellectual activity contradicting public interests; the principles of humanity and morality deserve special attention. However, these principles are not defined in the legislation. Moreover, a unique legal structure is emerging when soft law and voluntary rules can become a source of prohibitive measures, in particular, deprivation of the right to obtain a patent. In the development of the point of view of A. A. Mokhov and Yu. D. Sergeev regarding the need to consider the principles of bioethics as non-traditional sources of medical law, the author proposed to take into account these principles as non-traditional sources of civil law, in particular intellectual property law. The establishment of exceptions to the objects of patent rights in the context of a weak relationship between patent legal relations and prohibitions applied to certain types of activities need to be discussed separately. It has been proven, that the restrictions on patentability provided for in Part 4 of Article 1349 of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation are intended to become an additional obstacle to the use of civil law in violation of the foundations of morality, health, rights and interests of other persons. At the same time, the conclusion is justified that exceptions to the objects of patent rights in patent legislation cannot and should not replace the norms of specific legislation devoted to the regulation of prohibitions of certain types of activities and prohibitions of manipulations with certain objects.

The paper is devoted to the study of the potential for using the results of the development of modern technologies, including automation and robotization tools, to improve the labor market and the need to adapt existing approaches to labor legal regulation, especially within the framework of labor protection. New technological achievements entail positive consequences in the form of increased production efficiency, a decreased number of injuries and occupational diseases at workplaces, the formation of a decent working environment, overall improvement in the quality of life and new risks primarily mediated by the period of adaptation to changing working conditions. The paper examines the processes of such changes and suggests possible approaches to legal regulation of the labor sphere in order to achieve optimal coordination of the processes of applying technological innovations in production and achieving a balance of rights and interests of labor market participants.

The paper examines the legal regulation of the creation and operation of smaller innovative enterprises established by budgetary and autonomous scientific institutions and budgetary and autonomous educational organizations of higher education. The author in his study relies on statistics for the 15-year period of creation of small innovative enterprises. The study revealed a downward trend in the establishment of new small innovative enterprises. The actual absence of profits of small innovative enterprises from the practical application (implementation) of the results of intellectual activity has been demonstrated; almost all of their profits are formed through the sale of goods, works or services. The author analyzed the legal foundations of the functioning of small innovative enterprises, which allowed the author to identify a number of legal problems. The author proposes the ways to resolve these problems. At the end of the study, the target audience of the proposed amendments to legislation is outlined, especially for Paragraph 3.1 of Article 5 of the Federal Law of 23.08.1996 No. 127-FZ «On Science and State Scientific and Technical Policy» and Art. 103 of the Federal Law of 29.12.2012 No. 273-FZ «On Education in the Russian Federation,» as well as the projected results from their implementation.

The criminalization of acts that the legislator considers criminal is the core procedure that forms criminal legislation and the foundation of the state’s criminal law policy. The generally accepted basis for criminalization is the recognition of an act as socially dangerous. Thus, today the process of criminalization has an attribute of a vicious circle in definition (Latin: circulus in definiendo). This is a situation in which the definition of a phenomenon includes the properties of the phenomenon itself: the basis for criminalization, that is, the recognition of an act as a crime, is the recognition of the act as criminal. The paralogism at the basis of the legal structure determines its inconsistency. The purpose of the paper is to identify the role of the value approach in the process of criminalization of acts. The author proposes to link the basis of criminalization with the most important (universal) values, life benefits and interests that require special protection by the state. Rationalization of criminalization requires improvement of ideas about the object of crime, which is in many ways identical to the protected (and violated) interest and good. The process of endowing acts with the characteristics of criminality and illegality must be based on the recognition of the fundamental place of universal human values, and criminal law should direct the full weight of its protective measures towards their protection.

The rapid complication of social relations regulated by law and the resulting convergence of private and public legal branches have become prerequisites for the formation of complex legal entities within the framework of domestic legislation. The latter should include confiscation, which is equally subject to regulation by both civil law as a basis for terminating property rights, and criminal law as another measure of a criminal legal nature that resolves the tasks of the criminal policy of the Russian Federation. At the same time, a detailed analysis of the provisions of Chapter 15.1 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, regulating the legal regime of confiscation, from the point of view of their compliance with civilistic terminology and civil legislation in general, clearly demonstrates the absolute failure of the legislator to achieve the necessary level of inter-branch unity in the legal regulation of this coercive measure. This circumstance is the cause of significant problems in ensuring the balance of private and public interests when assigning and executing confiscation as another measure of a criminal law nature.

The paper examines the subjective side of disseminating information that does not correspond to reality. For those provisions of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation that indicate only one of two characteristics—falsity or unreliability—their content should be distinguished. The sign of deliberate falsity indicates precise knowledge that the information is false; the sign of deliberate unreliability reflects the assumption of correspondence or discrepancy with reality. Insufficient verification or selective examination of sources can only be attributed to unreliability. Deliberate falsity cannot be established solely on the basis that information does not correspond to certain sources, even if the sources are official. The establishment of the characteristics of disseminated information must take place in two stages: an assessment of the objective correspondence or discrepancy with reality, followed by an assessment of the subjective perception of the distributor. The basis for the conclusions for the articles of the criminal law on «fake» news is in the doctrine of defamation, for which the concept of deliberate falsity is central. At the same time, when establishing the intent to disseminate false information, one should not use the category of honest error: it contradicts the stable requirement of direct intent for defamation and is not actually supported by practice, even if the court mentions such wording in the decision. In general, administrative and civil liability mechanisms are preferable for the dissemination of false information; in the sphere of criminal law, only knowingly false dissemination should be criminalized, since the limits of accepting truth or falsity may vary, and a variety of sources and discussion are necessary for social development.

An analysis of the latest changes in criminal procedure legislation, the legal positions of the Plenum of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation and law enforcement practice in criminal cases shows individual areas for further improvement of the use of digital technologies in criminal proceedings. The proposal to grant the right to a remote meeting between the accused and the defense attorney on the territory of the pre-trial detention facility using video conferencing systems is substantiated in relation to all defense attorneys, including those who do not have the status of an advocate. There is a need to extend the possibility of remote meetings between a defense attorney and a person in custody to court premises. The authors criticize the practice of using as evidence a notarized statement on the circumstances included in the subject of proof from a victim, who is participating in the trial remotely, instead of questioning him using video conferencing. Arguments are presented that the absence in the investigative action report of an indication of all seized items and their descriptions is a significant violation of the law, which entails the inadmissibility of the evidence obtained. An assessment is given of the use of digital technologies in the conduct of investigative actions in order to prevent such violations.

The study is devoted to an analysis of a number of problems arising from the non-governmental nature of the institution of international commercial arbitration in the member states of the Eurasian Economic Union. The author believes that one of the strategic directions of EAEU development until 2025, namely the development of an initiative to create within the EAEU an international arbitration for the consideration of economic disputes based on applications from business entities, contributes to the doctrinal rethinking of the essence of the institution of international commercial arbitration. The author concludes that in the context of deepening Eurasian integration, the concept of «international» in the context of commercial arbitration is gradually acquiring a new meaning — «supranational». The supranational significance of international commercial arbitration, as the author notes, will simplify the mechanism for the recognition and enforcement of arbitration decisions by courts of national jurisdiction of the EAEU member states. This is due to the fact that the supranational significance of the arbitration decisions adopted by commercial arbitration will ensure a completely different system of guarantees for the enforcement of arbitration decisions as a supranational body of the EAEU due to the direct and immediate effect of arbitration decisions throughout the territory of the EAEU member states.

The Eurasian Economic Commission is the executive body of the integration association. By virtue of its purpose, the Commission also performs a law-making function. The implementation of this function follows from its most important role in the integration association — the «engine of integration» and «keeper of treaties» and directly influences the development of integration within the Eurasian Economic Union, forming its legal reality. The paper examines the procedure for implementing lawmaking activities by all political bodies of the EAEU, as well as the stages of the legislative process. Particular attention is given to the legislative function of the Commission, its place in the institutional system of the EAEU and its influence on integration processes. In addition, the experience of both the European Union and the constituent entity of the Russian Federation — the Kaliningrad region in the field of legislative activity is considered for its rational use within the framework of Eurasian integration. Based on the results of the study, the author identifies problems arising in the EAEU legislative process and proposes ways to solve them, as well as formulates proposals to improve the effectiveness of lawmaking activities of all political bodies of the EAEU, in particular the Eurasian Economic Commission.

The paper examines the problems of legal regulation of pat-down searches, arising from the modern practice of its implementation. Having analyzed the criminal procedure, administrative and law enforcement legislation, as well as empirical data, the authors propose to assign a single name «pat-down search» to all similar actions related to the examination of a person’s body, clothing and personal belongings; to consolidate the procedure for conducting a pat-down search in the Criminal Procedure Code of the Russian Federation; to specify the list of grounds, subjects of this event, as well as exceptions to the general rule in specialized regulatory legal acts separately for each type of activity; to establish the combination of drawing up a pat-down search report and using technical means of audio, photo and video recording as the main method of recording the progress and results of search activities; to allow search activities to be conducted without exposing a person’s body, as well as in exceptional cases and with its exposure to an official of either gender.

Agriculture, in the context of the need to enhance food security and efficient management of agricultural lands, needs sustainable development. As one of the leading sectors of the Russian economy, agriculture has the prerequisites for digitalization of the industry, the introduction of innovative and science-intensive products and technologies. The work is devoted to the study of legal regulation issues on the use of agricultural land for the purpose of developing renewable energy. In particular, two aspects of such use are highlighted: as a spatial basis for the placement of renewable energy facilities and as a means of producing biomass. Attention is given to the negative impact on the environment when using agricultural land in renewable energy. In particular, the issues of negative thermal and shadow impacts on lands, changes in the nature of land use due to the displacement of agricultural crop production for food and feed purposes are considered. The author formulates provisions that can serve as a basis for the formation of legal regulation of the use of renewable energy in agriculture.

The paper is devoted to the problem of waste inclusion in circular economy, resolved within the framework of a closed-loop economy. In the context of the preparation of the draft law «On the construction of a closed-loop economy», ways to resolve the issue of using substances generated during production are being discussed. In light of the circular economy, such substances can be used efficiently. However, by-products are practically impossible to differentiate from production and consumption waste as to the legal regulations, and therefore the goals of maximum use of raw materials and supplies, as well as prevention and reduction of waste generation, are not achieved. The prerequisites that allow the formation of a procedure for classifying a substance as a by-product are found in the explanatory documents of the Ministry of Natural Resources of Russia. As a result, recommendations are being developed for the formation of legal regulation applicable to all types of by-products, with the support of such a possibility by judicial practice, developing in favor of economic entities.