Almanac of law. Issue 16 (2025), pages 77–83.
DOI: 10.33663/2524-017X-2025-16-77-83
Bobrovnyk S. V.
Law enforcement acts: essence and functional purpose
The importance of law enforcement practice as a means of implementing the effectiveness of the law enforcement mechanism is emphasized, since only a declared prescription does not provide an effective impact on social relations.
The existing doctrinal approaches to determining the essence of legal norms in social reality by specifying the abstract content of the prescription to specific subjects and special life situations are clarified. It is argued that the effectiveness of legislation largely depends on law enforcement, which made it possible to conclude that the essence of law enforcement is multifaceted.
The focus is on the multifunctional aspect of law enforcement documents, which is manifested in ensuring the implementation of norms, specifying acts of legal influence, determining the extent of possible and necessary behavior of specific subjects, ensuring the protection and restoration of violated rights, creating mechanisms for the proper performance of legal obligations, resolving various disputes about law and rights, determining the forms and types of liability of subjects guilty of committing offenses.
A law enforcement act has a certain legal force, applies to the subjects to whom it is addressed, is adopted by an authorized state body or official, specifies the content of the norm, has a special procedure for acquiring legal force, is subject to appeal or protest, gives rise to legal consequences, and is exhausted by one case. These features determine the normative essence of law enforcement acts.
In addition to the normative essence of the studied acts, which are determined by the presence of their features, their substantive essence is distinguished. Three aspects of content are emphasized — the factual aspect, associated with the presence of subjects, their behavior and certain legal facts; the volitional aspect, determined by the will of the state, reflected in the norm; the will of the subject who adopts the law-enforcement act and the will of the subject to whom it is addressed; the legal content consists of the purpose of legal regulation, the normatively established competence of the subject of law enforcement and its consequences.
The state-administrative, socially oriented, organizational-power law-implementation and legal-consequential aspects of the essence of law-enforcement acts are also highlighted.
The general-legal (regulatory and protective) and special-legal functions of the law-enforcement act (lawconcretizing, law-enforcement, law-compensatory, law-educational) are studied.
Key words: law, legal regulation, legislation, law implementation, law enforcement, law enforcement act, functions of law enforcement acts, normativity, essence of law, legal force.
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