The Institute of Municipal Entities’ Charters as a Sacred Vestige of Federal Legislation

Abstract

Federal legislation, federal authorities and the scientific community share the idea of municipal entities as the most important element of local self-government without which local self-governement will not last a day. But in practice, due to the direct requirements of federal legislation, municipal entities’ charters can exist only in the form of a document that almost completely duplicates the rules of laws. Only on a very limited list of issues does the representative bodies still have variability in the formulation of charters. The question arises: why is it necessary to duplicate at the local level a significant number of directly applicable federal legislation? Municipal entities are created, their local self-government bodies are successfully formed and begin to work even before the adoption of the charter. Thus, charters have no constituent significance. It is quite possible to examine issues of local importance and the powers of local self-government bodies without referring to the charter of the municipality. It turns out that the charter is just a verbatim copy of the norms of federal laws that does not establish anything and is far from being the only and the best source of information about the structure of local self-government. Having no practical use, being a relic of the 1990s, having turned into an end in itself, the institution of charters is subject to abolition.