Public Law and Order in the Context of the 2020 Constitutional Amendments

Abstract

The reason for writing this article was the adoption in 2020 of the Law of the Russian Federation on Amendments to the Constitution of the Russian Federation, which amended Article 125 of the Constitution of the Russian Federation, concerning the enshrinement at the constitutional level of the term “fundamentals of public law and order”. In this regard, the article addresses such issues of the institution of public order as the absolute uncertainty of the term, the lack of uniformity in judicial practice and the increasingly broad interpretation of the concept of “public order”. As a result, it is concluded that the term “fundamentals of public order” is more acceptable, since what is referred to as public order in judicial practice actually constitutes its foundations (principles of Russian law, morality and ethics, etc.), an opinion is expressed about the need to unify terminology, using constitutional terms in sectoral legislation, as well as the need for constitutional enshrinement of the protection of public order as a general principle, while it is necessary to limit the “scope” for judicial discretion by enshrining the concept of public order and its foundations at the legislative level, since the institution of public order is of fundamental importance and its interpretation should not be unlimited.