The 1993 Constitution of the Russian Federation: The Constitutional Ideal Evaluation and its Implementation in Light of International Experience

Abstract

The paper carries out evaluation of the relevance of a liberal-democratic idea enshrined in the 1993 Constitution, goals and values and their compliance with the needs of a modern society on the basis of a 25-year-long operation of the Constitution. The author compares the constitutional enshrined in the Constitution of the Russian Federation and the reality. Evaluation is carried out in light of the international experience of development. It is noted that the value and authority of the Constitution suffer erosion under the influence of numerous objective and subjective factors due to the influence of which a significant gap between the ideal enshrined in the Constitution and the reality emerges, and the ideal itself is questioned. Trends are considered in sequence: 1) formation of axiology, humanization and socialization of constitutions, expansion of morality; 2) emergence of new doctrines of the ideal based on the compromise under the conditions of crisis of liberal-democratic and other doctrines; 3) emergence of global constitutionalism which changes the scope of constitution authority, intensifies international interventions in the design and forms universal standards. On the example of the Russian Federation, the paper highlights positive and negative consequences of the Soviet socialist state system transformation into the liberal-democratic system. The author focuses on the problem of legitimacy of the 1993 Constitution of the Russian Federation in the context of optimization of design that depends on the level of publicity of procedures. It is suggested that further discussion of the problems of legitimacy of the Constitution of the Russian Federation makes no sense. Otherwise, the legitimacy of the entire RF system of legislation adopted on its basis is challenged. Also, it is important to take into account application of forms and procedures of civil consent with regard to the adoption of the Constitution of the Russian Federation as reflected in the work of the Constitutional Conference, the Agreement on Public Consent and the nation-wide Referendum. Assessing the prospects of development, the author argues that under modern threats and challenges to humanity there is an objective need to review certain and other legal standards set out in national and international law. The author proposes to apply this approach to the regulation and studies and to call it futuristic; and the doctrine forming the ideal of the future should be called futurism. The ideal determination is based on examination of the level of Constitution implementation, which appears to be measured by three main indicators: congruence, effectiveness and objectivity of provisions. The main task of the futuristic is to identify, based on the assessment of the level of implementation of the current Constitution, the potential of development aimed at improving the order. The content of this potential during the recent period should be associated with the search for fundamentally new standards of life leading to a qualitatively different level of development of a human civilization. This approach predetermines the new structuring of constitutions and, accordingly, the branch of law, the result of which will be the transformation of law of survival into its highest type, namely, law of life based on the ideal.