Contextual definitions within the framework of modern logics and philosophy of science are widely used and explained. Moreover, they have acquired an independent epistemological meaning, along with other types of definitions. However, in the humanities, their applicability has been questioned and challenged many times. The author, on the contrary, substantiates the premise that the effectiveness of contextual definitions, in particular in the legal language, is not lower, and sometimes even much higher than the effectiveness of generic definitions. In a contemporary, especially western legal science, Bentham’s and Harts’s points of view that the contextual definition is opposed to the genetic definition continues to dominate, and the latter in relation to the analysis of legal concepts is recognized as ineffective and unproductive. The author is of the opinion that these two types of definitions may well coexist and in some sense complement each other, taking into account different areas of their applicability. The main and most characteristic area of application of contextual definitions, according to the author, are the constitutional rules of law. Constitutional rules of law in this approach are considered as contextual definitions of the basic concepts by which other rules of law in the legal system are formulated. Contextual definitions are very useful when we need to clarify the very general concepts and terms that can be found, for example, in the text of the Constitution. As a result, the defined terms become semantically meaningful, and their use in the legal language becomes syntactically consistent.

The article is devoted to theoretical and legal views of Aleksandr P. Kunitsyn concerning the concept offense. The author analyzes the process of emergence of law and human rights as its type, in the context of which the right to perform acts is particularly highlighted. The paper examines the scholars’ views with regard to the concept, types, elements of the offense and the circumstances excluding criminality of the act. General theoretical ideas of Aleksandr P. Kunitsyn are compared with the views of his contemporaries — representatives of the science of criminal law — in order to determine the degree of their development. In conclusion, the stance of Aleksandr P. Kunitsyn concerning the issue of punishment is given. The author notes that Kunitsyn quite objectively and naturally describes the process of emergence of law within which he places emphasis on human rights. This emphasis is particularly relevant today. The division of human rights into primary and derivative is a perfectly correct guess that has been accepted by the legal science as a whole. Formulating the concept of an act inconsistent with the law, Aleksandr P. Kunitsyn uses neither “crime” nor “wrong.” However, the word “offense” used by him only within the framework of the general definition refers to the private law interpretation of a wrongful act. Classifications of types of offenses offered by him surpass classifications offered by his contemporaries — representatives of the science of criminal law — by definition, conciseness and depth of thought. This is a very rare phenomenon, since in most cases it is the developments of the criminal law doctrine that precede the actual general theoretical ideas. His views on careless form of guilt did not have analogues among researchers of the phenomenon of crime.

The article deals with the normative regulation of genetic research and bioengineering, compares the experience of different countries in this area. The author subjects a legislative framework for the preservation of privacy in the formation of biobanks in such countries as Denmark, Israel and China to a detailed analysis. On the example of law enforcement practice in the States mentioned above, the author shows the variety of ways of development of relevant legislation, as well as the impact of legal, political and socio-cultural traditions on those ways. Special attention is paid to the connection of genetic research with the development of computer technologies that require complex legal regulation with due regard to specifics of genomic and computer knowledge. The author substantiates relevance of the thesis about a decisive role of the influence of political and administrative reasons in choosing the strategy of legislative and institutional regulation of biotechnology and bioengineering by means of a comparative review of various schemes and models emerging in Danish, Israeli and Chinese legal reality. In the article, the authors shift from the problem of development of legal support of genomic biobanks to the problem of ethical foundations of this activity, and expand the angle of view by considering protection of rights of unborn children, protection of rights of minors and those who have lost their legal capacity due to old age. The authors systematize and problematize the issues of preserving effectiveness of legal regulation in the development of precision (personalized) medicine that is based on the ontology of the unique, while law enforcement, in principle, is normative, and, therefore, based on the ontology of the universal.

The article deals with the essence and conditions of formation of the personality of a lawyer capable of independent decision-making and critical thinking, implementing the principle of independence in professional activity, focused on well-thought-out innovative actions and improvement of legal relations. The paper highlights axiological foundations of the development concentrated around common values that direct the lawyer to implement essential human qualities in their professional activity.

The paper shows the importance of the 4th Industrial Revolution and its product — the digital economy — in the development of mankind, its dual impact on the welfare and labor market of a specific people, the country, as well as the world community as a whole. The author examines the consequences of introduction of artificial intelligence, cyberphysical systems in production processes. Also, the paper analyzes the German program “Industry 4.0” shifting a German manufacturing industry on a digital basis through the use of digital technologies and setting up smart factories. The author summarizes the digital programs of the USA, Great Britain, Japan. The possibilities and problems of development and blocking of digital economy in Russia are shown. The author describes such basic components of the digital economy as blockchain, cyberphysical systems, digitalization, big data, artificial intelligence. He considers adverse consequences of the digital economy, factors blocking its development, as well as possible ways of their neutralization and elimination.

The paper shows the specificity of compulsory judicial constitutional review, reveals its role in the mechanism of legal protection of the Constitution of the Russian Federation. This institution is intended to guarantee constitutionality in the exercise of certain powers of the supreme state authorities, being an integral part of the legal composition of a decision made by public authorities that has constitutional significance (the application of measures of responsibility of public authorities, acceptance of a new constituent entity of the Russian Federation, convening of a referendum of the Russian Federation). In some cases, mandatory constitutional review is used as a means of ensuring constitutional legality of judicial law enforcement. The paper analyzes the features of compulsory judicial constitutional review: the emergence of a constitutional law dispute in this case is not always a prerequisite for appeal to the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation; the need for such appeal is provided for by mandatory legislation or follows from the legal stance of the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation; some principles of constitutional proceedings in relation to the order of consideration of such cases demonstarte their regulatory impact in a special way.

The paper deals with the concept, essence and purpose of anti-corruption monitoring in public administration. The author carries out a comprehensive analysis of the main directions of anti-corruption monitoring exercised by the relevant officials of state bodies. The paper examines provisions of normative legal acts at the Federal level and at the level of constituent entities of the Russian Federation that envisage the order of anticorruption monitoring, as well as the powers of participants of this direction of combating corruption in public administration. The author gives examples of reporting documents of anti-corruption monitoring of some public authorities and gives his own assessment of their content. The author substantiates the proposals for amendments and additions to the federal anti-corruption legislation in order to consolidate anti-corruption monitoring as one of the most important tools to combat corruption.

The article deals with the historical development of the concept of a beneficial owner in international tax law. It is noted that in the Russian Federation, the concept of beneficial owner was introduced into the tax legislation only in 2014, but attempts to use this concept were undertaken before 2014. The author thoroughly analyzes legal acts adopted before the “de-offshore law” and approaches to interpretation of the concept of the actual right to income; the paper examines the modern concept of “beneficial owner” set forth in the Russian tax legislation. In general, the concept of beneficial owner has passed a long way of development both in international practice and in the Russian Federation. At the moment, there are still difficulties in interpreting the concept of beneficial owner of income, as well as in the process of forming a uniform law enforcement practice in relation to the concept under consideration.

A modern social and economic context of joint consumption (sharing economy) raises new questions about the use of structures of organizing contractual relations, in particular unilateral organizing transactions. The article presents the main doctrinal problems of unilateral transactions, as well as unilateral organizing transactions. The author examines approaches to the classification and classification groups of unilateral transactions, and highlights the constitutive features of unilateral organizing transactions. The paper considers the legal nature of a unilaterally binding and unilaterally enabling transactions, sets out the legal relationship between these groups of transactions. Constitutive features of unilateral organizing transactions form the basis for qualification of transactions that are most often considered in the doctrine as unilateral organizing transactions. Thus, the author defines the legal nature of issuing powers of attorney, testamentary refusal, offer, acceptance, registration applications for improvement of living conditions, etc. Methodologically, the article is based on the main results of the reform of contract law of the Russian Federation, new trends in the science of civil law. Also, the author scrutinizes the classical civil law doctrine on unilateral transactions, organizing contracts and organizational relations.

The paper analyzes the civil law regime of dual-use goods in the aspect of dual-use goods turnover. The author reveals the role of civil law rules as elements of the legal regime in the legal regulation of vertical and horizontal legal relations, as well as analyzes the process of transformation of civil law rules in the course of law enforcement. The author dwells on the main legal characteristics allowing to differentiate dual-use goods, namely: technical features, scope of application, availability of export control. In the paper, the author offers his own definition of the legal regime of dual-use goods. In addition, we identify such a feature of the regime of dual-use goods as dependance of the degree of turnover of dual-use goods upon external factors.

The author concludes that the functional purpose of civil law rules in the legal regime has changed.

In conclusion, a number of recommendations are proposed to improve efficiency of the legal regulation of foreign economic activity in the sphere of turnover of dual-use goods. 

The paper is based on the analysis of the current civil procedural legislation of Russia, demonstrating different approaches of the legislator to the procedure of providing evidence, and France, whose experience is interesting from the point of view of further formation and development of the domestic model of pre-trial (preliminary) and extrajudicial evidence, and judicial practice. The possibility of a specialist to participate in the provision of evidence (using specialized knowledge), including de lege ferenda as an independent way for providing evidence (within the respective pre-trial procedure), of provision of expert advice as an independent means of evidence (in the case of compulsory participation of a specialist when viewing the electronic notary sources, carried out in order to provide evidence). In addition, the author, based on an analysis of the current provisions of the Civil Procedural Code of the Russian Federation and the fundamentals of Notary Law, concludes that a specialist can participate in a notary’s exercise in order to provide evidence of the following actions: inspection of written or material evidence, as well as the appointment of expertise (to fill the lack of special knowledge required by the notary when forming issues to be resolved by an expert or experts). There is a proposal to supplement the Arbitration Procedure Code of the Russian Federation with the norms establishing the possibility of the participation of a specialist when the court conducts inspection of written and physical evidence in order to ensure such.

The author conducts a retrospective analysis of the institution of subject matter jurisdiction in Russian civil proceedings. The institution of subject matter jurisdiction originates in the pre-revolutionary period. To determine the mechanism of delimitation of competence between jurisdictional bodies, such concepts as “exclusive jurisdiction” or “establishment” were used. During this period, a distinction was made between the competence of administrative and judicial bodies.

The concept of “subject matter jurisdiction” was enshrined in Soviet legislation for the first time ever. Moreover, in the scientific literature, subject matter jurisdiction is often identified with court jurisdiction. The main task of subject matter jurisdiction in the Soviet period was the division of competence between the courts of general jurisdiction and state arbitration. During this period, the subject and object criteria for delimitation of competence between the courts of general jurisdiction and other jurisdictional bodies, which are currently used, were formulated.

In the post-Soviet period, the judiciary was finally separated from the executive and the courts acquired particular significance in resolving jurisdictional disputes. All large categories of cases were transferred to the jurisdiction of the judiciary. The creation of a system of arbitration courts has led to an even greater importance of the institution of subject matter jurisdiction. It was in the post-Soviet period that the categories of “subject matter jurisdiction” and “court jurisdiction” were finally delimited. As a result of the study, the author concludes that there is some continuity in the development of the institution of subject matter jurisdiction. 

The paper deals with the problem of the application by the courts of the Russian Federation of decisions of the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation and the European Court of Human Rights in the same civil case. The problem is caused by the uncertainty of the hierarchy of these sources of law in terms of international and national law. The issue of non-fulfillment of ECtHR judgments was considered from the point of view of the provisions of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties of 1969. The author analyzes foreign practice on the execution of judgments of the ECHR. In particular, the author analyzes the practice of the United Kingdom and the Federal Republic of Germany, having faced with the contradiction of the fundamental norms of the state with the ECtHR judgments.

The mechanisms to balance the legal positions of these courts have been revealed. The author suggests considering Protocol No. 16 to the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms as one of the possible means to eliminate the contradictions between the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation and the ECHR. The procedure of advisory opinions, from the point of view of the author, may make it possible to coordinate the legal positions of the ECHR and the national practice of applying the Rome Convention to the stage of submitting a complaint of Russian citizens to the ECHR.

On the basis of the concepts used in the legislation on the circulation of medicines (including the relevant provisions on licensing) the paper distinguishes between two licensed activities: drug production and pharmaceutical activities. The concepts of “manufacturing” and “production”, “vacation” and “sale” are related within the framework of the norms of the Federal Law dated April 12, 2010 No. 61-FZ “On Circulation of Medicines”, taking into account the need to separate economic activities according to the Russian Standard Industrial Classification of Economic Activities (OKVED 2) OK 029-2014. There are examples from judicial practice that consider cases when obtaining a license for pharmaceutical activity is not required (taking into account the objectives of the activity, as well as the list of entities established in the law that need to obtain a license for pharmaceutical activity). The problem of a significantly wider use of the concept of “pharmaceutical activity” in various special and scientific literature as compared with the definition set by the legislator is touched upon.

The paper analyzes copyright registration systems in the Russian Federation and abroad. The fact of creation of a work gives rise to the author a number of rights and obligations without performing any formalities, including registration of the work. There are three systems in which registration of a work creates for the copyright holder additional protection of the rights of the author, does not create negative consequences for non-compliance with the registration procedure or is provided by law only for specific copyright objects. Deposit is considered as an element of the procedure for registration of works, including as an indirect confirmation of the fact of the creation of a digital work for the lex loci originis collision binding states (the law of the state of origin of the work), and for the lex loci protectionis targeting states (the law of the state where protection is claimed), the deposit does not confirm the fact of the creation of the work, but helps to preserve the copyright object.

The current system of social support for the population is regulated by a large number of federal and regional regulatory legal acts adopted over the past 25 years. This creates both significant problems for beneficiaries (does not allow to quickly focus on what measures of social support and under what conditions they are entitled), as well as certain difficulties for the authorities themselves.

During the existence and development of the legal field in the field of social support, not only the terminology has changed, but also the principles and approaches to social protection. There is an objective need to systematize the existing legislation. The subjects of the Russian Federation took the path of codification: Social codes of the Astrakhan, Belgorod, Volgograd, Leningrad, Omsk, Yaroslavl regions and the city of St. Petersburg have already been adopted.

The article provides a comparison of the social codes of the regions of Russia according to six criteria: basic concepts, goals and objectives of the code, principles of social legislation, the structure of the code, the presence of formulas for calculations in the text of the code, the limitation of action in time Following the analysis, recommendations were made to the constituent entities of the Russian Federation on the codification of social legislation. 

The paper is devoted to the problems of committing crimes using virtual reality technologies and their qualifications. The optional features of the objective side and their significance when using new digital technologies are characterized. The factors complicating the investigation of such crimes are analyzed in detail. According to the results of the study, the authors come to the conclusion that the technology of virtual reality gives a criminal completely new opportunities. First, virtual reality allows you to manipulate the emotions and consciousness of the victim at a completely new level. The psycho-emotional effect is comparable in strength to the effect of events in the real world, at the same time it can be achieved remotely via the Internet. Secondly, in connection with the integration into the virtual environment of real-world devices, the consequences of actions in virtual reality also extend to the real world. This means that many criminal acts for which contact with the victim was necessary can now be performed remotely.

The establishment of an intentional form of guilt and its specific type is mandatory for the implementation of the provisions of Art. 8 of the Criminal Code. In criminal proceedings in connection with tax evasion, a direct intent should be established in the act of the accused, otherwise the provisions of the Resolution of the Plenum of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation of December 28, 2006 No. 64 “On the practice of criminal law on liability for tax offenses”. One of the proofs of direct intent in the act of the accused may be the decision of the tax authority to prosecute for the tax offense, made according to the results of tax control measures (in-house or on-site tax audits). In the event that it establishes an imprudent form of the taxpayer’s guilt in committing a tax offense, in proving the guilt of the accused in the course of criminal proceedings there may be an intractable contradiction.

In many norms of the Special Part of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation legal significance is attached to such special qualities of the victim as pregnancy, minority, old age, helplessness, illness and dependence on the culprit. They are considered as criminally-based or qualifying attributes. The main point of the research is the problems of reflection of the norms characterizing the victim signs in the criminal law and formulating corpus delicti taken them into account. According to the author, it is necessary to add the following. characteristic “seniority” into clause “v” Part 2 of Art. 105 of the Criminal Code; characteristics “pupillage” and “seniority” into Art. 110 and 110.1 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation which with the helplessness, dependence and pregnancy set forth therein should be identified as particularly qualifying circumstances; “seniority”, “dependence” and “pregnancy” into Art. 111 and 112 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation which with the minority and helplessness contained in the articles should be identified as particularly qualifying. Art. 115 and Part 2 of Art. 119 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation should be supplemented with pregnancy, pupillage, seniority, helplessness and dependence, with the first of them in the status of especially qualifying. Art. 117 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation should be supplemented with pupillage and seniority, which, together with the pregnancy, helplessness and dependence set forth in the article, should be singled out as particularly qualifying, etc.

The paper considers the peculiarities of the legal protection of personal data of minors in the field of electronic communications in the European Union. The reasons for the expediency of introducing differentiated rules for minors in the context of the realization of the right to protection of personal data are substantiated. In addition, the article analyzes the provisions of Regulation (EC) 2016/679 on the protection of individuals in the processing of personal data and on the free movement of such data which entered into force in May 2018. The author reflects its innovations regarding the conditions for applying to the minors the concept of informed consent for processing and measures to verify the age of data, including the provision of services in electronic communications.

The paper discusses the problems of legal regulation of development of resorts and medical and recreational areas in the Russian Federation and suggests ways to further improve legislation in this sphere. The relevance of the topic is due to the prevailing unsystematic development of the territories of most resorts in Russia, which leads to an increase in anthropogenic pressure on resort ecosystems, degradation of natural medicinal resources, deterioration of the ecological and sanitary-epidemiological condition of the territories of resorts and health-improving areas. The author shows the importance and features of the organization of development of resorts and medical and recreational areas to ensure their sustainable development, analyzes the existing urban planning legislation in the part relating to the construction of resorts, reveals problems of regulation and implementation of urban planning activities in the resorts. The priority role of territorial planning in the regulation of reasonable development of resorts is justified taking into account the peculiarities of their functioning and further development.