Socio-legal monitoring and its importance for identifying and establishing the limits of the scope of legal regulation

Abstract

At any stage of the development of the state and society, there arises a need to identify the objective necessity for legal regulation of social relations. In addressing this issue, the legislator is confronted with two main challenges: on the one hand, they must avoid artificially expanding the scope of legal regulation, and on the other hand, unnecessarily narrowing it, since both may diminish the regulatory properties of law, thereby negatively affecting its effectiveness. Establishing the limits of legal regulation necessitates the use of various law-making technologies, which include socio-legal monitoring. The objective of this study is to delineate the essence of socio-legal monitoring as an independent law-making technology and a form of legal activity of the same name that enables setting the limits of legal regulation. The methodological basis of the research comprises the universal dialectical-materialistic method, as well as general scientific techniques (analysis, synthesis, induction, deduction, generalization, comparison, and some others) and specific scientific methods (formal legal, comparative legal) of scientific knowledge. Socio-legal monitoring is a law-making technology aimed at analyzing and evaluating the content and form of law-making, interpretation, law enforcement activities, legal provisions, as well as public relations by collecting diverse information in order to enhance the efficiency of legal regulation. This law-making technology forms the basis for implementing the same type of legal activity. The social nature of legal monitoring is determined by the inclusion of social relations (the object of legal regulation) among the objects of monitoring, the analysis of which enables to identify the scope of legal regulation and consolidate it as the subject of legal regulation. In terms of identifying and establishing the limits of the scope of legal regulation, three significant types of socio-legal monitoring can be distinguished. The specifics of each type will determine the place and potential use of this technology, as well as its significance: monitoring of public relations, monitoring of interpretive practice and monitoring of law enforcement practice.