Legal Policy, Legal Order and Civic Oversight in the Penal System
Introduction: the study of the state of legal order in various branches and institutions of Russian law is both a theoretical and an applied issue. Finding a solution to this issue affects the efficiency of organizing legal regulation of civic relations. The categories of legal policy and legal order are of key importance in this regard. They are not only mutually dependent, but also necessary for understanding the ways to improve the efficiency of civic oversight of the penitentiary system. Methods: we use dogmatic and legal analysis of scientific theoretical and legal concepts and formal and legal analysis of the current legislation. Results: legal order stems from the implementation of legal policy of the state in the system of legal norms, procedures for their implementation and results of their fulfillment. The use of philosophical categories such as “form” and “content” allows us to identify characteristic features of legal policy as a scientific concept. We prove that it is advisable to distinguish legal policy forms depending on the stages of regulation rather than on the types of legal activity. The stage of rational law-forming process corresponds to the “non-normative” form of legal policy, which consists in the adoption of various concepts and strategies for development; law-making as a stage at which the rule of law is established launches the mechanism for its general application and is accompanied by the “normative” form; the implementation of norms is seen as a final stage of regulation, which is characterized by the presence of casual legal policy. The content of legal policy constitutes a unity of goals, means and principles of activity. Discussion: we focus mainly on analyzing the content of normative legal policy in the sphere of civic oversight of the activities of Russia’s penal system. Content-related specifics of this form of legal policy are determined by the features of the subject and method of regulation and are viewed as principles that are not directly enacted in the legislation, but follow from its “spirit” and meaning. These principles allow us to form an objective view of the content of legal order.