Categories of justice and balance in practice of the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation

Abstract

The object of this research is justice and balance viewed as the paramount legal categories. The subject of this research is the interrelation between them reflected in the materials of law enforcement practice of the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation. Research methodology leans on the systemic and axiological approaches; general scientific methods of deduction, induction, analysis and synthesis; sociological method of content analysis used in studying the decisions of the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation; as well as statistical for quantitative processing of the acquired data. Special attention is given to the questions of fair coordination of the constitutionally protected values and balanced distribution of subjective rights and legal responsibilities among the parties to legal relations. The following conclusions determine the theoretical novelty of this research: 1) analysis of the decisions of the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation demonstrated the semantic correlation between the legal categories of justice and balance; 2) it is admissible to consider the orientation towards achieving certain balance as one of the essential criteria of the principle of justice; 3) classification of the objects amenable to balancing in relation to each other is conducted in accordance with the requirements of the principle of justice; 4) such classification determines the two level of balance: the firs one implies coordination of the constitutionally protected values, while the second one suggest the coordination of rights and responsibilities of the parties to legal relations; 5) formulation is provided to the three general riles of balanced distribution of subjective rights and legal responsibilities within the specific legal relations; 6) an original definition is given to the legal balance, which largely reveals the content of the principle of justice.