City charters as the local constitutions

Abstract

The statutes of territorial communities of cities have become more and more common subject of research of scientists in Ukraine since the processes of decentralization of public power became actualized and became more intensive. A number of scholars call these statutes “local constitutions”.
 The article deals with the comparative analysis of the formal and essential characteristics of the city charters and constitutions. The aim of the comparison was to evaluate, if it is correct to write about the city charters as about the local constitutions, municipal constitutions etc.
 If we compare the formal features of the constitutions and statutes of territorial communities, it is noteworthy that only one of them is similar - the legal technique used in writing the text of the Basic Law can be used in writing the statutes of territorial communities. It is implied that the text of the constitutions is written in very simple language so that it is clear to ordinary citizens that “attention” should be focused on the maximum use of simple and clear terms, fixing the avoidance of excessive use of special technical terminology; non-use of obsolete and underused terms; professionalisms, neologisms, analysis of the text of the normative legal act for the presence of overloading the text with foreign terms, promoting unity, uniformity of use of legal terminology.
 Consideration of both substantive and formal features of the statutes of territorial communities in comparison with similar features of the Basic Laws gives grounds to state almost complete lack of similarity between these acts. Certain analogies can be made only in relation to the structure of these acts, and sometimes a similar legal technique is used in their writing. An important common feature is the desire to express in the constitutions - national identity, and in the statutes of territorial communities of cities - historical, national-cultural, socio-economic and other features of the urban community. Thus, to call the statutes of territorial communities of cities “local constitutions”, as is often the case in the literature, is hardly fair. Prospects for further research in this direction are a deeper analysis of the nature and legal nature of the statutes of territorial communities of cities.