COVID-19 pandemic. New challenge for constitutional relations

Abstract

The subject. Current constitutional legal relations are considered in the context of the objective legal reality of the COVID-19 pandemic. The purpose of the article is confirmation or confutation of the hypothesis that COVID-19 pandemic impacts on the development of constitutional relations. The methodology. The author uses the method of comparative legal analysis legal measures aiming the minimization of pandemic’s impact on society and formal legal analysis of legislative acts. The main results of the research. It is alleged that the COVID-19 pandemic had a significant impact on the state of constitutional legal relations and revealed the most acute social and economic problems in all areas of public life. The development of constitutional legal relations in a pandemic will lead, firstly, to a new correlation of collective and individual human rights. As a result of a pandemic, constitutional legal relations in the healthcare sector will move from the category of individual right to life and health to the category of public interest. When the health of an individual citizen is a guarantee of economic and public safety. Secondly, the development of the institution of self-limitation of constitutional human rights. From the position of law, self-restriction of rights allows: to ensure personal and public safety of citizens; avoid introducing restrictions on constitutional rights and freedoms; eliminate redundancy of human rights restrictions. Self-limitation of constitutional human rights is considered as conscious voluntary abstinence from the exercise of constitutional rights on the recommendation of public authorities in an emergency or other conditions close to them (high alert, self-isolation) in order to ensure public and personal safety. Self-limitation of constitutional human rights allows us to observe the constitutional balance of personal and public interests. Thirdly, the experience of combating a pandemic has shown that if the population is able to cope with the consequences of a short-term restriction of their rights on their own, then long-term quarantine measures lead to a significant drop in incomes of the population and must be compensated by the state. Conclusions. The COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic on the one hand triggered a new stage of constitutional legal relations, and on the other hand, like any emergency, exposed the most acute social and economic problems in society. The development of constitutional legal relations in the context of the emerging digital society and the state will not only lead to the development of new principles of constitutional development and, as a result, to constitutional legal relations of a new, digital level, but also affect such areas as the ratio of collective and individual human rights; development of the institution of self-restriction of human rights; further improvement of compensatory constitutional legal relations.