The Concept of Concretization of Principles and Rules of Law by Judicial Authorities

Abstract

In legal science, there are different points of view regarding the ability of judicial authorities to specify the principles and rules of law. The author of the paper believes that concretizing work carried out by judicial bodies has a great potential for improving legislation aimed at reducing abstractive nature of law rules, eliminating gaps in law, forming certainty and unity of law enforcement. However, to date, judicial specification has not received sufficient theoretical and legal justification. The purpose of the study is to identify the specifics of the concretization of the principles and rules of law by judicial authorities and to define the general concept of judicial concretization. To achieve this goal, the author analyzes approaches to the category «concretization,» examines elements and relevant examples of the rules’ concretization by higher judicial authorities and explains the features of the legal category under examination. The semantic understanding of judicial concretization is twofold — as an individualization of the rule of law applied to the specific case under consideration and as a detailing and clarification of the rule. Conclusions are drawn that specification of the principles and rules of law (judicial specification) is an independent category of law, not legally consolidated, but actually existing in practice; it is an objectively legitimate and necessary legal activity of judicial bodies that involves clarifying, detailing, expanding the content of the principles and rules of law in the process of law enforcement as applied to a specific case (sphere of legal relations) that results in developed judicial legal position of concretization consolidated in the judicial act.