2025 Issue №1

The article examines the general trends in the development of legal regulation of the digital (Internet) space in the Russian Federation. Particular attention is paid to the relationship between the development of technologies and their involvement in economic turnover with the level of legislative regulation. The purpose of the research is to identify the main patterns of Russian law-making activity. The following methods were used as the methodological basis of the research: legal hermeneutics, used to reveal the main provisions of the legislation; historical-critical, used to display cause-and-effect relationships in the development of the legal regulation system. Results: The prerequisites for the emergence of legal regulation of the digital (Internet) space in Russia appeared simultaneously with the spread of the Internet in society — in the 1990s, but legislative acts did not directly affect the relevant area, and the regulation was carried out primarily through self-regulation. Nevertheless, government agencies made attempts at rule-making. Special legislation began to appear in 2006, simultaneously with the popularization of the Internet in commercial circulation. Active lawmaking began under the influence of social networks; the legislator was forced to begin to take into account the specifics of this phenomenon. The modern fourth stage of legislative development began after the spread of distributed registry technology (blockchain) in economic circulation and is characterized by attempts to use the technological capabilities of the digital environment in legal regulation.

It is a matter of scholarly consensus that legal doctrine has significantly influenced the development of law — at least within the Romano-Germanic (continental) legal tradition. However, the mechanisms through which doctrine exerts its law-shaping influence remain insufficiently explored in Russian legal scholarship. One may also note conceptual gaps and inconsistencies in the terminology employed in studies on this subject. This article attempts to describe the functioning of doctrine in the formation of law through the concept of the “doctrinal factor of legal communication” — a notion that has not yet undergone thorough scholarly analysis within the framework of post-nonclassical legal understanding — and to provide a definition of it. The methodological foundation of the study is built upon the communicative theory of law (one of the leading approaches in post-nonclassical legal science) and contemporary theoretical perspectives on the functions of legal doctrine as components of the process of constructing legal reality (legal systems). As a result of the study, the author proposes a definition of the doctrinal factor of legal communication as that segment of legal communication mediated by doctrinal texts, through which the legal system is constructed. The proposed definition integrates various manifestations of doctrine within legal communication and appears preferable in terms of conceptual comprehensiveness.

The article addresses the pressing issue of the relationship between legality and expediency as principles of law. The objective of the study is to determine the correlation between these principles within legal science. Based on a comparative analysis of scholarly perspectives on expediency and legality as principles of law, and employing the method of abduction, the author attempts to define the place of the principle of expediency within the multi-level system of legal principles, including supreme, general legal, inter-branch, and sectoral principles. Special attention is given to the increasingly significant ideas of I. Kant concerning the principle of expediency. As a result of the study, the author proposes a definition of the principle of expediency as a substantive element underlying the complex systemic concept of legality. Given the polysemous nature of legality, the author critically evaluates the notion that legality can be viewed in its entirety as a form of expediency and supports the view that the principle of expediency (or reasonableness) constitutes one of the structural general legal principles of legality, forming an integral part thereof. The principle of expediency may also function as a principle within individual branches of law. The study substantiates the conclusion that the operation of the principles of legality and expediency manifests distinctively at various levels of legal theory — general legal, inter-branch, and branch-specific.