Abstract: The article concerns the nature of the modern Constitution, which is reflected by its values, which integrate social groups and classes. Implementation and development of these values should be the main goal of any social and political forces, which came to power by constitutional means. The Constitution serves as legal «clothes», which the government has to wear in order to remain legitimate. The government has to work for the good of the people and the society, follow the constitutional ideals, the stability of basic principles and fundamentals, and realistic evaluation of the situation. Attention is paid to two interrelated goals, which the Constitution allows to achieve — stability of basic principles and fundamentals of the state for the sake of progressive development of state and social life and at the same time flexible reaction to the social demands, and development with due regards for changing social and state practice. It is shown that the effect of the Constitution, protection of constitutional values, their implementation and development via the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation is more efficient, compared with the situation when no such judicial body exists in a state. Value and role of the Constitution, which is protected by the Constitutional Court is ever-growing in a society. The Constitution is perceived b y the citizens as a «living» acting document, capable of protecting their rights, and not just a declaration. The final decisions of the Constitutional Court enshrine the constitutional values and obligations, constitutional imperatives, influencing the law-making and legal practice, strengthening and developing the system of guarantees of basic rights and freedoms of individuals and citizens.

Keywords: jurisprudence, the Constitution, stability and development of the Constitution, nature, Lassalle, the Constitution of the Russian Federation of 1993, the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation, constitutionalisation, the legal positions of the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation, legal conscience, legal order.

Abstract: The article concerns the issues of contents and nature of the Constitution of the Russian Federation, its value for the development of the Russian statehood and society. The author perceives the Constitution as a micro-model of the society, its legal framework, within and on the basis of which the mechanism of state and municipal government is functioning and the basic rights and freedoms are guaranteed. The perspective character of the Constitution is a specific form of social and scientific forecasting, creative influence of law upon the formation of new social relations. The author draws a conclusion that the supreme value of the new Constitution is due to the fact that it legally provided for the sovereign status of Russia as a united multi-national state, civilization — state, state of a united civilian nation, brought together by the Russian people, Russian language and Russian culture, which has a worthy place in the global community. It provided for the modern model of the Russian federalism. The novel constitutional and legal system was formed on the basis of the Constitution of the Russian Federation of 1993 according to the federalism principles as basic foundations for the development and strengthening of the sovereign Russian statehood and statehood of the peoples who self-determined themselves as national and territorial state-formations within the Russian Federation. The problems of implementation of the Constitution attract attention of the constitutional scholars to the issues of the system-forming role of the Constitution, constitutional values, legitimacy of the Constitution, constitutional responsibility, constitutional justice, modernization of the judicial system, boundaries to the limitations to the rights and freedoms of the people, means of interaction between the public government and the civil society institutions, constitutional status of the constituent subjects of the Russian Federation, mutual responsibility of the Federation and its subjects, theoretical and legal bases for the regional constitutional legislation, search for the position of Russia in the situation of globalization and terrorist threats.

Keywords: jurisprudence, Constitution, rule of law state, the principle of separation of powers, federalism, sovereignty, human rights, the President of the Russian Federation, the Federal Assembly, the constituent subjects of the Russian Federation, the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation, the state power.

Abstract: Based on his diaries, notes and other materials the author, who was a participant of the Constitutional Assembly, studies the specific features on adaptation of the «Presidential» draft of the Constitution of the Russian Federation, he touches upon some aspects of political and legal discussions regarding the draft after the first plenary hearing of the Constitutional Assembly, provides the positions of lawyers, scientists and politicians on many issues regarding the contents of the draft Constitution of the Russian Federation of 1993. He discusses the position of R.I. Khasbulatov, who on June 9, 1993 announced the conditions for the participation of the Supreme Soviet in the Constitutional Assembly — for the President to leave off the thesis on incompatibility of the Soviets and democracy, full-scale participation of the Parliament and the Constitutional Commission in the hearing, evaluation of all of the drafts of the Constitution, advisory character of the Assembly, constitutional procedure for the adoption of the Basic Law, provided by the current Constitution and decided upon by the Supreme Soviet, and the Congress of Peoples’ Deputies. The author quotes S.S. Alekseev, one of the drafters of the Presidential version of the Constitution on the native defect of the «parliamentary» constitutional draft, unlike the draft amended by the Constitutional Assembly. «While the position on a number of issue sis the same, the «parliamentary» draft had in principle preserved the fundamental elements of the Soviet system, first of all, in the role of the Supreme Soviet as a supreme «almighty» governing body, and similar roles of the local Soviets. However attractive the Soviets may have seemed in that draft, in the opinion of S.S. Alekseev, they could not cross out the primary characteristic features of the Soviets, which were incompatible with the true parliamentarism and municipal self-government.

Keywords: jurisprudence, the Constitution of the Russian Federation, the Constitutional Assembly, the President of the Russian Federation, the Supreme Soviet, the Constitutional Commission, the constitutional process, the drafts of the Constitution of the Russian Federation, the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation, the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation.

Abstract: The twenty years of work of the Russian parliament allows one to draw the first theoretical and practical conclusions on the successfulness of the organizational and legal bases of its chambers. It is well known that the presence of the parliament within the system of state government bodies does not in itself prove the presence of true parliamentarism. In order for the parliamentarism to be present there is need for the representative body to have certain qualities, among which one may single out the following: 1. Election of the deputies of the parliament at the free and fair general elections, which is the basic guarantee for the representative character of this state body; 2. Independence of parliament within the system of separation of powers — since the parliament forms its legislative branch; 3. wide scope of competence of the parliament in the sphere of state government (for example in the sphere of formation of executive branch) and presence of the decisive competence in the sphere of law-making. The author defines parliamentarism as the system of power relations based on separation of powers, representation of various interests of various social groups in a civil society, political pluralism, preservation of basic rights and freedoms of individuals and citizens. Having analyzes the changes in the process of formation of chambers, their structure and forms of their activities; one may see the novel features in the formation of the Russian parliamentarism. The article also touches upon debatable issues on choice of election systems, formation of the Council of the Federation, status of chamber regulations, etc.

Keywords: jurisprudence, parliament, constitution, law, chamber, regulation, elections, committee, commission, deputy.

Abstract: It is an important goal of legal science to establish legal status of a human being. The nature of legal status of an individual is rooted in the due and allowable behavior of a person, his rights and obligations, and in late decades they were integrated into the doctrine of human rights. This doctrine is recognized by the international community and national legislation in most of the states in the world. Defining nature of human rights as natural and social value and the studies of their evolution from the times of antiquity to these days is of special importance for their studies. The article includes a relative periodization of philosophical and legal thought, allowing to single out the most significant features of attitudes to human rights. The author recognizes the value of singling out the general tendencies and specific vectors in the development of human rights of different peoples in different epochs and different specific historical situations. Special attention is given to the process of transfer from the «class» nature of human rights (including the USSR and the Soviet Russia) to the rights of an individual as a bio-social person. The attention is drawn to the difficulties of advancement of human rights theory on civilizational an d territorial scales (the European and Christian culture, Islamic culture, culture of the peoples of the South-Eastern Asia, etc.), attention is paid to the paradoxes and faults of the doctrine of human rights itself and the principles of its implementation. It concerns the popular opinion on the outdated character of human rights, correlation of an attitude to a human being as a «goal» and «means» in the hands of the state, technological interference in the natural (biological) nature of a human being, problems of disarmament in the human environment, etc. At the same time, it is obvious that currently the human rights doctrine is an important landmark for the activities of people on our planet, while it should be further improved in order to rationalize their being on our planet and to guarantee readiness to face new challenges.

Keywords: jurisprudence, human rights, nature, evolution, paradoxes, new challenges, ideology of human rights, international acts on human rights, rights and obligations, natural law.

Abstract: The article contains an attempt to analyze the governmental power as an object of constitutional legal regulation. Much attention is paid to the studies of the norms of the Constitution of the Russian Federation. The author consequently analyzes the power of multi-national people, state and municipal power. The article contains theoretical conclusions, which develop the current scientific understanding of power as an object of legal regulation; the author offers a number of novel definitions, as well as the bases for the amendment of existing theoretical conclusions. Based upon the systemic character of any science, the article contains a conclusion on the difference between the terms of «system of constitutional legal recognition of government», and the «system of constitutional bases of government». Evaluating the relations between different types of state power, the author notes that their mutual influence should be rest upon the basic democratic principles and it should guarantee intensive development of society and state, and to form the necessary conditions for the implementation of lawful interests of a person. Based upon the results of the study of modern situation in the constitutional legal regulation of the matter in question the author draws a conclusion on the presence of system of government. The complex of legal prescriptions, enshrining the bases of constitutional legal regulation in the sphere of social relations on attaining, use and transfer of government power is established at the constitutional level. Additionally, it is stated that the Constitution of the Russian Federation provides for a complicated legal regulation system, which has a number of individual characteristics. The author singles out organized character, integrity and adaptivity among these qualities.

Keywords: jurisprudence, power, Constitution, rule of the people, state government, separation of powers, municipal self-government, forms of rule of the people, state government bodies, social government, municipal power.

Abstract: The article contains analysis of the theoretical bases of constituting power, its competence and forms of its implementation in accordance with the Constitution of the Russian Federation, Constitutions (Ustavs) of the subjects of the Russian Federation. The result of the analysis was a conclusion that the right of people for referendum, as well as the right to accept the basic law via the referendum and to have a legislative provided competence to change it may be regarded as an expression of primary constituting power. An example of a derivative executive power may be a constitutional assembly. The author analyzes the issues of correlation between the constituting power and other types of power in the state taking into account the principle of separation of powers. In the opinion of the author the classic theory of separation of power only applies to the state power, and it does not apply to the constituting power. Constituting power is the basis for the public power. Special attention is paid to the definitions of «elective power» and «constituting power». The author makes a conclusion that the definition of constituting power, its competence, types and forms of implementation have a much larger scope than that of an election power, which exists for the purpose of formation of a representative body. The contents of election power are absorbed by the constituting power.

Keywords: jurisprudence, Constitution, constituting power, election power, separation of powers, rule of the people, constitution, Constitutional Assembly, referendum, initiative of the people.

Abstract: The article contains analysis of the influence of practice of the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation upon the process of adoption, understanding and implementation of the norms of constitutional law of the Russian Federation. Special attention is paid to the influence of the constitutional control body over the legislator. The author analyzes the examples taken from the practice of the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation, then she draws a conclusion that the legal practice transforms the norms of constitutional law, and their substantial qualities change. The author singles out a number of aspects of influence of the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation upon the norms of constitutional law. Firstly, its decisions contain direct instructions on the need for the legislator to adopt certain constitutional legal norms. Secondly, in some of its decisions this Court in fact makes law, while not being a legislative body. Thirdly, the decisions of the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation concern the procedure for the application of legal norms (territorial, temporal, based upon subject to whom it applies). Fourthly, the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation in its decisions establishes the correlation among the various legal norms.

Keywords: jurisprudence, law, norms, Constitution, the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation, interpretation, legal positions, legal regulation, constitutional control, legal practice, legislator.

Abstract: The article provides the information on the theses by the participants of the Russian-German Symposium, which took place in the University of Potsdam in September of 2013. The Symposium was devoted to the 20th anniversary of the Constitution of the Russian Federation. It included hearings and discussions on the theses by the Russian and German scientists, concerning the topical issues of constitutional development of the Russian Federation and the Federal Republic of Germany, stability and dynamics of the constitutional principles in Russia and in Germany, development of Constitutions of the Lands in Germany, introduction of amendments into the Constitutions of the Russian Federation and of Germany, development of constitutional rights and freedoms in the Russian Federation and in Germany, role of the constitutional courts in Russia and in Germany, constitutional development , etc. The discussion has shown that a number of issues of constitutional development of both states and the possible solutions to the existing problems are of mutual interest for both parties. Both Russian and German scholars were especially interested in finding out the views on the further development of the Constitutions of the Russian Federation and of Germany. It enriches the science of constitutional law in Russia and in Germany and facilitates the further development of scientific contacts between the University of Potsdam and the Kutafin Moscow State Law University.

Keywords: jurisprudence, the Constitution of the Russian Federation, the Basic Law of the Federal Republic of Germany, stability and development of a constitution, the Constitutional Court, constitutional principles and values, basic rights and freedoms of individuals and citizens, amendments to a constitution, revision of a constitution, Constitutions of the Lands of the Federal Republic of Germany.