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69Abstract.
Keywords:
JURISPRUDENCE: PRESENTATION OF A TEXTBOOK
CODIFICATION
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.14420/en.2014.2.6
Svetlana Boshno, Doctor of Juridical Science, Professor and Head of the Political Science and Law Department of the Russian Academy of National Economy and Public Administration, e-mail: [email protected].
Codification is a type of systematization. Unlike other types of systematization, in codifying the new regulation combines the provisions of the earlier acts with update elements. Codification is an area of lawmaking. Codified acts have a specific structure, divided into general and special parts. Codified acts are divided into provisions, statutes, the model law framework, basics (basic principles), codes. Each variety of codified acts is used to settle certain kinds of social relations. The article discusses the historical path of codified acts that substantially have been transformed in the transition from the Soviet to the Russian law system. Codes are federal laws by status. A substantial portion of codes proclaims their power and dependence of other acts of the industry law from them.
systematization, codification, code, statute, regulations, model act, legislation, law making, legislative process, transport Charter, the Charter of a constituent entity of the Russian Federation.
1. Codification concept
Codified acts traditionally occupy a central place in the legislation system. Their features and value are in several planes. On the one hand, they should serve as the foundation, the bases of legislation. Based on their norms current laws and regulations arise. On the other hand, codification is a specific type of lawmaking, respectively, the code is the result of this systematizing activities.
Codified form is used for an integral regulation of the area of law, comprehensive legislative regulation of public relations in a separate area. Codification reflects a higher measure of concentration of normative material in a particular area of public relations. The rules expressed in the codified Act secure the legal aspects of the industry, Law Institute, that gives special legal force to codified acts.
Codified acts take a central position in the industry or Law Institute. The codified act performs this role due to the fact it contains all or most of the relevant rules (the Criminal Code of the RF). For large areas of law, the code serves as the foundation, the basics of other acts that occur only on the basis of its authorization or instructions, for example, the Civil Code of the Russian Federation. This requires high quality from codes.
Current and codified legislation differ by their goals. Under the current lawmaking, the legislator aims to resolve urgent issues of political, economic and cultural life. The codification goal consists in ordering previously published regulations on all issues of a certain industry of the legislation. An important condition for codification is also preparedness of legislation for codification, certain degree of its elaboration. This means that the acts to be codified, must represent a certain developed group with features of an area of law.
Codified acts are created using specific rules of legislative technique. Codified acts consist of a large number of articles and have a complex internal structure. They are divided into chapters, sections and other structural elements.
Codification procedure is more capacious and prolonged than the normal law-making process. Works on codification include revision of the given area of the current legislation in order to identify rules that require cancellation or change. Thus, two processes are carried out at the same time: adoption of a new act and conformation of other acts in accordance with a new one. Due to compliance with specified conditions, the result of codification is lasting for a long period, ensuring the stability of public relations. As a rule, the period of validity of codification is about 30 years.
Thus, codified documents stand out in the system of normative legal acts on substantive and procedural grounds.
2. Types of codified acts.
Types of codified acts are quite diverse: provisions, statutes, the model law, basics (basic principles), codes.
A) Provision is an act regulating the legal status of authorities, institutions, systems of similar organizations, agencies. These documents are featured by large volume, these are complicated structured acts.
Provisions take a significant place in the system of regulations. This form of normative legal acts is used for regulating the fundamental issues of public life. There are documents issued in the form of provisions that govern very narrowly special issues-allowances to the salary of a certain institution. The provision is adopted as a result of the codification, which is a type of systematization.
B) The law-making bodies use such form of codification as the statute. Difficulties in adopting these types of acts are caused by the fact that there is no unanimity as to the meaning and limits of the use of the term «charter». Many years of practice made the meaning excessively ambiguous. Of course, there are many multi-valued terms, however, a feature of the term «charter» is that that the various facets of its use are not comparable, they arise through different ways and have various areas of application. The term «Charter» is understood as a regulation, which determines: a) the legal status of state or municipal entity; b) legal status of an international organization; c) the legal status of specific legal persons, Charter-founding document); d) organization of a specific activity (military charters, transportation charters).
Charters are complex regulations governing the legal status of certain organs and organizations, or some form of public (municipal) or economic activity (TRR (Transportation Rules of Railways), IWWC (Inland Waterways Charter). Basic rules governing the legal status of a number of constituent entities of the Russian Federation, the structure, powers and organization of the activities of their Government are formulated in the form of the Charter as well.
Charters are a traditional form of domestic legislation. Some acts of union statutory lawmaking remain valid. For example, the Charter of Road Transport was adopted in 1969. It was amended and changed periodically, most recent was in April 1995. In the modern lawmaking practice there has been a tendency to improve status of such charters through their re-enactment as federal laws. Transportation Rules of Railways of RF, adopted in the form of a law in 1998, launched the beginning to this new law. In 2003, a federal law «Statutes of railway transport of the Russian Federation» replaced Transport Charter. Inland Waterway Charter acted from 1955 to 2001, when it was replaced by the Inland Water Transport Code of the Russian Federation.
Statutes as name of acts regulating certain activities are gradually superseded. For example, the Charter of Inland Waterway Transport of Union of the USSR 1955, actually lost effect in connection with enactment of the Inland Water Transport Code of the Russian Federation dated 03.07.2001, No 24-FZ.
Subjects of the Russian Federation-regions, oblasts, cities of Federal significance, autonomous districts and autonomous oblasts, have charters as by-laws, for example, the Charter of the city of Moscow. Republics, subjects of the Federation, adopt Constitutions. By-laws of the subjects of the Russian Federation with the name «Charter» are received extremely negatively, as they are formal proof of inequality of subjects - non-republics with republics. Indeed, the term «Constitution» is much more significant in comparison to the «Charter».
Thus, the modern legislator continues to enact statutes, but is moving towards the use of charters as a variety of laws. The transition definitely occurred on the example of the founding documents of the RF subjects. Statutes as acts on types of activities are in transition, but the trend is quite obvious.
C) Model act - is a sample document containing recommendations for the activities of public authorities, options for possible law-making decisions. Model acts are used for unification, to achieve maximum unity of legal systems of government entities that make up the federation. Model acts are used in confederations, international alliances and organizations in order to provide guidance to members and assist them in developing their own document.
Sample documents are not normative, they do not have imperious nature. They are of advisory, guiding character. Their systematizing role is obvious. The principal feature of model acts is that that they are not result of systematization but these documents perform systematizing role, as uniform regulations may be developed on the basis of model documents.
The scope of regulation of the model laws is varied. The documents are developed by different agencies and individuals, such as: scientists, scientific groups, government bodies, expert and analytical organizations, domestic and international institutions.
An example of the model act is «Model law on limited liability companies», adopted by the Inter-Parliamentary Assembly (IPA) CIS on November 2, 1996. In
constitutional law, the use of model laws is mastered in the area of legislation on constitutional (statutory) courts of subjects of the Russian Federation.
It seems that prospects of use of model acts are obvious for legislation of subjects of the Russian Federation. Depending on the centralistic tendencies, it may be possible the expansion of the scope of their use from subjects of joint jurisdiction up to the subjects of the constituent entities of the Federation. For the regional legislator a model act recommended by the federal authorities, could serve as a qualitative basis for its lawmaking. Implementation of this technique of lawmaking activity organization can only take place under conditions of reasonable combination of power at different levels.
D) The bases of legislation, the basics, the fundamentals form a special type of codified federal laws. These documents are classified as codified by their content, scope and sphere of regulation, focus for consolidating the existing rules and the simultaneous introduction of new regulations.
This legal structure was used by the Soviet state. Basic principles or foundations determined the general principles of regulation of certain relationships and the most important conditions for their application. In these codified forms, general, binding for the territory of the whole country, the legal provisions, on the basis of which and pursuant to which federal republics should issue their own codes, specifying the all-union laws, were consolidated.
In the history of the domestic law, basics laid the foundation for most areas of law, including civil. Today, this form is used for the implementation of the federal regulation of joint management issues.
Despite the fact that the current Russian Constitution has not included into a number of titles of acts a term «bases», such acts have not ceased its existence. Thus, Bases of Legislation on health care of the RF, on an Archival Fund of the Russian Federation, on notaries are in force. In the Russian Federation, the federal laws on the matters of joint competence perform the role of the bases of legislation. For example, federal law «On the State Service of the Russian Federation», «On General Principles of Organization of Local Self-Government in the Russian Federation». They are federal laws by its place in the hierarchy of legal acts, and they are bases by functional role.
Bases of the legislation is a federal act containing basic, most general rules on the subject of the joint jurisdiction of the Russian Federation and its subjects, which must evolve and be concretized in the regulations adopted by the subjects of the Russian Federation. They contain objectives, regulatory principles common to all subjects of the Federation, fundamental concepts.
The researchers noted that in the current legislation and law-making practice «status of bases, the possibility of their development in the federal or regional regulatory acts ... is not clearly developed». The modern theory of lawmaking suggests to treat them as the basic laws introducing «general principles and regimes of legal regulation that are then developed in particular laws». For the development of bases, codes are designed to perform direct regulatory control in certain areas of law. This model is interrupted, as in practice the issuance of federal code often abolishes validity of bases of the legislation on a similar issue, which is unacceptable. Indeed, such cancellations took place. For example, Foundations of the Forestry Legislation of the Russian Federation adopted in 1993, have been cancelled by the Forest Code of the Russian Federation 1997,
and it is not the only case. The reason for this law-making decision is related to the fact that the Constitution of the Russian Federation has radically changed the distribution of powers between the state in general and the subjects. It is in connection with the new order of the legal regulation of corresponding relationship that it had to sacrifice some of the bases.
In general, the legislator uses a model of bases of the legislation, but does not name them so. The federal legislator publishes federal laws on the matters of joint competence, which, according to their purpose and carried out functions are the bases of the legislation.
Despite the quite authoritative and lively discussions concerning the use of the Soviet lawmaking experience in implementing the «fundamentals» - «codes» system, the legislator shows no interest to them. Thereof, the destiny of modern bases is in the form of «federal laws without additional names».
3. Code.
An essential form of codified acts is the code. In Latin the code means book. The code is a systematic set of rules and norms that uniformly and in details regulates the specific sphere of social relations. Code either completely absorbs all norms of the sector concerned (Criminal Code of the Russian Federation), or it contains the main volume, the most important part of such rules (Civil Code, Labor Code). The code contains principles, definitions, rules of direct regulation as well. It is of great importance in the area of the law, since it brings together all standards of its major institutions. In fact, it stands out as the industry formation document.
Codes can be subjected to classification for different reasons. For example, the codes are divided into sector and complex (sub-sector) ones. Depending on the subject of the legal regulation, there are Material Codes (Civil Code of RF, Labor Code of RF) and Procedure Codes (CCP RF - Code of Criminal Procedure of the RF, GP RF - General Prosecutor). Most of codes describe the necessary, desirable, acceptable behavior. With such positive approach, offences constitute a violation of the legal norms of positive content (LC Rf - Labor Code, CC RF -Civil Code). Some codes are exclusively of repressive nature. They describe an invalid, unlawful demeanor and establish measures of legal responsibility (CC RF-Criminal Code of the RF, CAO RF - Code of Administrative Offences).
Of particular importance to the characteristics of the codes is stability, the well-formedness of social relations that are the subject of legal regulation of the Act. This feature has become acute due to the significant expansion of use of the code form by the legislator. The codes have emerged over the last decade with new subjects of regulations: Customs Code of the RF, Town Planning Code of the Russian Federation, Budget Code of the Russian Federation, Tax Code of the Russian Federation, part one and part two. These codes are changed often.
Codes of the USSR were characterized by stability. For example, the Code on Marriage and Family of the RSFSR changed 8 times from 1969 to 1995 years, with most of new laws introduced during the latest reforms after 1993.
Codes differ from other codified acts by a special position not only in the overall hierarchy of regulations, but also among the acts, equal by formal features. In modern constitutional model of Russia, codes are a type of federal laws. However, codes establish standards elevating them above laws that are not codes. This is achieved by including expressions in the first articles of the
code. Other regulations of the industry must comply with the code in force. This tendency was named a self-proclamation. Thus, article 5 of the Labor Code of the Russian Federation has established a provision that labor rights contained in other laws must conform to the present Code. Similar provisions are contained in the article 1.1 of the Code of Administrative Offences of the Russian Federation, in the article 3 of the Arbitration Procedural Code of the Russian Federation. However, there are exceptions; for example, the RSFSR Housing Code does not contain such a limitation.
The Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation has found that the Constitution of the Russian Federation does not define and cannot define a hierarchy of acts within one type, in this case - federal laws. No federal law by virtue of article 76 of the Constitution of the Russian Federation possesses substantially greater legal force in relation to another federal law. The decision was made in 2000, and the rules establishing priority significance of codes in the legislation system had not been cancelled.
It should be noted that the essence of the term «code» has undergone some changes after the transformation of the Soviet legal system into Russian one. Most of the industries in the Soviet law were regulated as follows: at the level of the USSR-bases of the legislation, at the level of the Republics-codes. The Soviet legal system did not know derogation from this rule. The stability of this tradition was confirmed by the fact that the intention to establish all-union Civil Code for 21 years did not give any result, this idea was abandoned. Traditions, including legal, barely are overcome even with existence of constitutional rules. The current Constitution of Russia did not leave place to the bases of the legislation and contains the Code of Terms (bases of the legislation). However, the practice has kept the codes, but abandoned the federal fundamentals.
Despite the need for a decision on codified acts, the federal legislator is in no hurry to solve it, and the law-making bodies of the RF subjects enjoy arisen uncertainty.
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