IDEAS OF THE RULE OF THE PEOPLE (DEMOCRACY)
The article is devoted to the analysis of the works by Professor Ekaterina Kozlova, who is a classic of state law. Her works are devoted to the rule of the people (democracy) and the laws of its development. The author traces the implementation and the regularities of development of one of the most important institutions in state law that were identified by Prof. Kozlova, namely, the rule of the people in contemporary constitutional law science and practice. The article considers the issues of the theoretical content and dynamics of the development of basic concept "popular will", the processes of its formation and the methods of its objectification, its subjects that are the bearers and exponents of the will in works by Prof E. Kozlova, in the science of contemporary constitutional law and in the rulings of the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation. The constitutional imperative of the Russian statehood democracy and revolutionary changes in the system of the rule of the people determine the task the scientific society needs to decide, namely, justification of a new approach to the definition of the Russian statehood. It is obvious that the vector of the development of the state and law and the mechanisms of their interconnection to greater extent depend on how democracy is understood, on its essential content, the role it plays in the modern state and social life. Nowadays, the formation of the political popular will, forms of its expression and mechanisms of its implementation must be the purposes that determine the activity of the public power. Implementation of new terms into legal reality of the country carried out by the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation and giving contemporary content to the commonly-recognized definitions need to be systemized and interpreted. The historical and comparative law methods are used to investigate the contemporary process of democratization in different spheres of administration to wide extent. In the opinion of the author, the consolidation of new organization forms of representation of the will and interests of the multinational people of the Russian Federation confirm regularities and tendencies revealed by Ekaterina Kozlova The author comes to the conclusion on the significance of constitutional principles of democracy and the rule of the people as basic principles of the Constitution of Russia for the science and practice. Ekaterina Kozlova made a significant contribution into the theory of democracy; ideas that she expressed more than 30 years ago are still actual.