The Criteria for Determining Legal and Non-legal Laws in the Russian Federation as the Guarantee of the Constitution Enforcement

Articles 2 and 18 of the Constitution of the Russian Federation contain a categorical norm-principle: the meaning, content of laws, the activities of the legislative power in Russia should be determined by the rights and freedoms of man and citizen, which are both the highest constitutional value. At the same time, today in the Russian Federation there is a practice of adopting laws, at least adopted by the authorized bodies with formal observance of the established procedure, but do not embody in their essence the constitutional and legal principles and values. To counteract this unconstitutional practice, the subject of the master's study are the legal requirements to the legal nature of the laws adopted in the Russian Federation, the criteria for distinguishing between legal and non-legal laws and constitutional and legal values. In the course of the research the requirements to the legal character of laws developed in the theory of law and state and in the science of constitutional law are systematized, the needs of researchers of branches of the Russian law in certain signs of the law allowed in the legal state are defined, the requirements to legal character of laws established by the Constitution of the Russian Federation, the generally recognized principles and norms of international law, acts of the European Commission for Democracy Through Law, and also the requirements formulated in practice of the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation and European court of human rights. As a result, a list of requirements to the legal nature of laws in the Russian Federation is drawn up, the criteria for which it is possible to determine whether the law adopted or already adopted in the Russian Federation is legal or not are formulated, the mechanism for determining the compliance of laws with the values enshrined in the Constitution of the Russian Federation is developed.