Abstract: The author attempts to analyze the concept and the attributes of legal mechanism on the base of the existing approaches systematization. This analysis hasn’t been described in legal literature before. The article states the existing approaches to defining the notions “legal regulation mechanism”, “force of law mechanism”, and “state mechanism”, which allow developing a uniform author’s definition of the category “legal mechanism”. The author finds out and characterizes the specific attributes of legal mechanism: compulsory legal confirmation, specific goal, a system and complex character, specific structure, connection with legal procedures. The author applies various general scientific methods of logical cognition: analysis, synthesis, abstraction, modeling, the system-structural, functional and formal-logical approaches. The complex theoretical and practical interdisciplinary approach to legal mechanisms research conditiones the necessity to use the systems method which integrates theoretical abstractions and provisions of the current legislation, and empirical data of law-making and law enforcement activities. The study has a general theoretical character; it is an interdisciplinary study aimed at the development of the general legal mechanisms theory and their effectiveness increase. The author carries out comparative analysis of scientific approaches to understanding the essence and the content of the category “legal mechanism”, and develops its uniform definition. The author identifies and characterizes the specific attributes helping interpret legal mechanism as an independent legal category. 

Keywords: complex character, specific purpose, legal procedure, legal means, force of law mechanism, state mechanism, mechanism of legal regulation, legal mechanism, system character, specific structure

Abstract: The article considers the questions of essence and system of legal instruments, the main stages of formation of the theory of legal instruments and the instrumental approach in law. The scientists's views on the legal nature of legal instruments are analyzed, the certain conclusions concerning the essence and the maintenance of this legal phenomenon are made. The author considers the system of legal instruments, the grounds for their classification and the peculiarities of legal order as a complex legal instrument filling with primary legal instruments. The study uses the various general scientific  methods and ways of logical cognition: analysis and synthesis, abstraction, modeling, the system and structural, the functional and formal and the logical approaches. The special methods are presented by the special sociological and the statistical methods, and the particular – by the formal-juridical, the comparative and legal and the method legal norns interpretation.The novelty of the research consists in systematization of essensial characteristics of legal instruments and identification of the core factors - the bases for classification of legal instruments and peculiarities of functioning of simple (elementary) legal instruments within their integrated complexes (legal orders). The theoretical judgments of the author are confirmed and illustrated by legal sources.

Keywords: legal mechanism, legal order, system of legal instruments, efficiency of law, purpose in law, instrumental theory of law, legal instrument, criteria of classification, primary legal instruments, complex legal instruments

Abstract: The article includes author’s approach to the understanding of procedural law, its correlation with the material law, and criteria, using which one may single out the complicated forms of law-enforcement activities, within the framework of which the social relations requiring procedural legal regulation are formed.

Keywords: process, legal process, application of law, material, procedural, implementation, procedure, form, proceedings.

Abstract: The article includes analysis of functions of law in their non-traditional aspect, and the author defines the place and role of functions of law among other legal categories. The article provides a definition of the function of law, and functional nature of law.