LEGAL RESPONSIBILITY OF A MEMBER OF PARLIAMENT AS A COMMITMENT OF STATE RESPONSIBILITY TO THE PEOPLE AND HUMAN

Abstract

The article explores the concepts and fundamental characteristics of legal responsibility of People's Deputies. According to the author, consideration of the institution of legal responsibility of parliamentarians is relevant and promising as a type of social responsibility in theoretical and practical terms. The urgency of the problem is due to the trends of legal responsibility differentiation and institutionalization going that far, in particular in foreign countries, that have led some experts to justify the concept of autonomous parliamentary responsibility as a separate phenomenon among types of legal responsibility in general. Attention is drawn to the fact that an integral part of the process identifying the institution of legal responsibility is the improvement of legislation on the legal status of a People’s Deputy, which component is justifiably considered legal responsibility of a parliamentarian as a political figure authorized to execute state legislative functions. It is proved that parliamentary responsibility is a specification of the state responsibility principle which is significant in the state of law as a legal entity towards the people as a legal entity and citizens. The article also analyzes the peculiarities of the introduction of legal responsibility of a parliamentarian into legislation and state and legal practice resulting in the gradual separation of constitutional and legal responsibilities of a parliamentarian and parliament. The author joins the new already established approaches in legal science, under which all the multifunctionality of the phenomenon of legal responsibility of a parliamentarian is not limited to the issue in institutional and normative dimensions, but also in socio-cultural and value-anthropological aspects, which is absolutely justified by contemporary understanding any functional or dysfunctional legal phenomenon having not only a purely institutional but also a value dimension. It is argued that legal relations of the people and human with the state should be built on the basis of mutual responsibility under terms of a democratic law and social state in general, since a state turns a real subject of responsibility towards society under democratic conditions provided normatively (constitutionally and legally) and institutionally (through the establishment of specific government bodies and officials responsible for a certain element of the system of state functions including Members of Parliament).