QR Code as a New Legal Reality

Abstract

The development of digital technologies has led to the active introduction of new forms of expression of legal documents into the legal system. For several decades of their existence, QR-code and barcode have shown their uniqueness and versatility, as well as convenience in certain areas of law enforcement practice. In the conditions of the coronavirus pandemic, states had to restrict natural rights in order to curb the spread of the disease and accelerated the introduction of QR codes into the everyday life of citizens to control the established measures and certify the fact of vaccination, having actually implemented a socio-legal experiment The inductive method of research with the analysis of the draft law on the introduction of QR codes revealed insufficient theoretical elaboration of the mechanism for introducing digital innovations into legal life. This is fact generated social tension and revealed problems of ensuring the legality of the relevant mechanism of legal regulation. Given the application of a QR code as an innovation in legal life in 2021, theoretical and legal analysis demonstrated the need to strengthen the fundamental foundations of legal theory. On the other hand, it showed the necessity to ensure the expediency, concretization and validity of the introduction of not a QR code per se, but rather of restrictive measures as a method of legal regulation. The problem of legal and digital literacy of the population remains unconditional. Citizens’ misunderstanding of the specifics of the process of using QR codes in practice often generates and provokes increased conflicts, which in modern conditions of a developing digital society and a publicly accessible information space contributes to the artificial formation of an aggressive field, which ultimately affects the rule of law and legality.