Loyalty to the Constitution of Ukraine as the main type of legal understanding

Abstract

The article is devoted to the critical review of peculiarities of philosophical and legal substantiation of the issue of fidelity to the Constitution of Ukraine as the main type of legal understanding. It has been generalized that the supremacy of the Constitution of Ukraine creates in the modern conditions of international integration and processes of globalization the problem of coordination and legal provision of the priority effect of the constituent and basic norms of intra-state law and norms of international and European law (as well as various segments of the integration law). It has been summarized that modern understanding of the supremacy and higher legal power of the Constitution of Ukraine is worth to be related to the concept of fidelity to the Constitution of Ukraine as the determining type legal understanding. It has been emphasized that fidelity to the Constitution of Ukraine as legal and cultural-semantic concept and type of legal understanding allows identification of constitutional and moral values, which are guided by the interpretation, implementation or actualization of constitutional norms. The key idea of the concept of «fidelity to the Constitution» – is a special type of constitutional legal understanding. Adherence to such legal understanding – is an indispensable guarantee of respect for the Constitution of Ukraine, advocacy in law-making and law-enforcement practice of the priority of constitutional provisions, ensuring their stability and carrying out careful interpretation, inadmissibility of arbitrarily expanding interpretation of constitutional norms, constitutional responsibility. It has been found that the category of «fidelity» has got not only a semantic relationship with derivatives of word «fide», but also with words denoting rational verification: fidelity is correspondence to the truth; correctness; complete likeness or correspondence to something (question of verification or authenticity). Fidelity to the Constitution can be said in the sense of professing faith in the Constitution, and in the sense of rational substantiation and verification of the conformity of other legal acts, actions, etc. with the Constitution. The following semantic nuances of fidelity to the Constitution of Ukraine as a type of legal understanding have been concretized: fidelity to the Constitution of Ukraine as to the legal act; fidelity to the Constitution of Ukraine as a set of norms of the current constitutional legislation; fidelity to the Constitution of Ukraine as to constitutional values established in the Constitution; fidelity to the Constitution of Ukraine as to constitutional ideals; fidelity to the Constitution of Ukraine as formed real constitutional and political practice; fidelity to the Constitution of Ukraine as consistency in the implementation of constitutional values; fidelity to the Constitution of Ukraine as the effectiveness of the constitutionalization of the legal order (the process of constitutionalization acts as an indicator of fidelity to the Constitution).