Legistics: Applied Science and Practice (Foreign Experience)

Abstract

The subject of the study of the article is legalistics — a new direction of foreign legal science and legal activity, which are aimed at improving the law as the main element of the legal system. The formation and development of legalistics was a kind of reaction to the decline in the role and quality of lawmaking in foreign countries. The very process of devaluation of the law is due to many factors: the crisis of parliamentarism, the uncontrolled growth of legal acts, the decline in legal security, legitimate trust. Legal security, which is designed to protect those to whom the law applies, from properties that cannot be attributed to its merits: large volume, low quality of the text, inconsistency with other regulations, frequent changes, etc., is considered as a criterion for assessing the quality of the law. Trust in the authorities through the prism of “legitimate trust”, which is the subjective side of legal security, reflecting the perception of the law by society and citizens in the feedback parameters, is certainly an important factor affecting the effectiveness of its application. The purpose of the study is to reveal the content characteristics of legalistics as scientific knowledge and its refraction in practical activities for the development of legal acts. This goal determined the internal structure of the work. Assessment of the regulatory impact of the bill, organization of legislative work, the role of law developers — these issues of legal work became the object of the article’s analysis. At the same time, both general scientific (logical, historical, systemic) and special research methods were used: formal legal and comparative legal methods, the method of doctrinal interpretation of law. Based on the results of the analysis, one can state the formation of legalistics abroad in two manifestations: as an applied science, initially focused on improving lawmaking, and legalistics as an organizational and legal algorithm, the task of which is to build a stable and effective legal system. In this context, foreign experience in the development of legalistics seems to be not only of speculative interest, but can be practically useful to Russian legislators, as well as specialists involved in organizing similar activities.
For citation: Pilipenko A.N. (2022) Legistics: Legal Science and Practice (Foreign Experience). Law. Journal of the Higher School of Economics, vol. 15, no. 2, pp. 60–84 (in Russ.). DOI:10.17323/2072-8166.2022.2.60.84.