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312LAW SYSTEM AND LEGISLATION SYSTEM
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.14420/en.2013.5.3
Abstract.
Keywords:
Svetlana Vladimirovna Boshno, Doctor of Legal Sciences, Professor, Head of Political Science and Law Department of Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration, e-mail: boshno@yandex.ru.
This paper is a continuation of publication of the «Jurisprudence» textbook by Svetlana Vladimirovna Boshno. Law system is a key element of general theory of law. The major fundamentals of its construction are subject matter and method of legal regulation. Of great importance is the division of legal regulation methods into mandative and dispositive ones. The paper articulates the concepts of institute and branch of law demonstrated through various examples. An important classification of branches of law is separation of procedural and substantive, public and private branches of law. Law system and legislation system are considered as interrelated categories that correlate as content and form. A necessary tool for using voluminous legislation is systematization in the following forms: codification, consolidation, incorporation. Codification is considered as a type not only of systematization, but of law-making, too. The reason for this is that in the process of codification, a lawmaking body makes changes of legislation, as a result of which a new document - a statute, is adopted.
Law system, systematization of legislation, codification, consolidation, incorporation, method of legal regulation, subject of legal regulation, private law, public law, institute of law, branches of law, procedural law, substantive law, dispositive method of legal regulation, mandative method of legal regulation, legislation.
The Concept of a Law System. Subjects and Methods of Legal Regulation A law system is an internal structure of law that is objectively caused by the system of social relations in terms of combining and arranging normative documents
in a particular sequence.
The building of a law system is a reaction to the development and complexity of law. At the dawn of the legal mechanism, when legislation was kept to one or more acts, there were no demands on the law system. There is no such demand in modern religious-conventional systems; similarly, the concept of a law system is not in demand in Anglo-Saxon countries. However, for the Roman-Germanic legal family, the law system is crucial. It reflects the need of this kind of states to streamline all socially important relationships with the help of regulatory acts.
A law system represents a complete structure. It covers all norms and forms and is a complicated multi-level complex that includes branches, institutions and the rule of law. The law system meets the requirements of systems in general, as evidenced by the presence of complex interrelationships between the following: the elements of the rule of law; the standards consolidated in institutions; the institutes of a specific branch of law; and the separate branches of law.
The selection of distinct elements of the law system, i.e., its branches and institutions, is not accidental. It is due to the nature of relations in different spheres of public life. A properly built law system should correspond with a real and actually existing division of public relations into various isolated groups.
To construct a law system, categories, such as the subjects and methods of legal regulation, are of particular importance.
The subjects of legal regulation are a variety of social relationships that, objectively, by their nature, can have a normative and organizational impact and are within socio-political conditions that require this impact to be executed using legal norms and all other legal means to form the mechanisms of legal regulation.
Public relations of various types are the subjects of legal regulation. However, not all public relations can become the subject of legal regulation. Human relationships may be regulated by the norms of morality, ethics and religion, as well as other forms of social norms. Law should govern only those relationships that cannot sustainably function without having a legal effect and for which regulation is currently needed.
Since the peculiarities of the relations that are regulated by law are part of the basis of the separation of law into branches, a strictly defined area of public relations, which is qualitatively different from other public relations and represents the subject of the legal regulation of other branches of law, is the subject of the regulation of each branch of law.
For example, property relations are the subject of legal regulation under civil law, as are related non-property relations.
A method of legal regulation represents a specific method or combination of methods by which an effect on the behavior of participants in legal relations is executed.
A method of legal regulation depends upon:
- the objectives and tasks that the state establishes by publishing those or other rules of law;
- the nature of the subjects of the legal relationship;
- the nature and the relationship of the rights and duties of the subjects of
legal relations;
- various means to ensure and protect the rule of law.
Public relations may be regulated by the method of governmental orders, for example, the management of state property and the payment of taxes. These relationships are not equal: one party has the legal power to affect the other party, i.e., their relations are built on the basis of subordination. Relations can be built on the basis of equality and autonomy. More often, an agreement is the foundation for such relations. For example, civil legal relations are built this way.
The separation of private and public relations that are permissible and mandatory, as well as imperative and dispositive, has become very important. This distinction is most clearly seen in a comparison of civil and administrative relations. In civil relations, the parties represent themselves as legal and physical persons. The public authorities act as legal persons and are denied the opportunity to use their power. However, in legal relations in which the public body has the authority, the rules of administrative law or another public law will be their regulator. In the Civil Code of RF (p. 3, article 2), this issue is resolved as follows: «To the property relations based on subordination of administrative or other governmental authority of one party to the other, including tax, and other financial, and administrative relations, civil legislation does not apply unless otherwise provided by law».
The methods specified are imperative and dispositive.
The imperative method (mandatory) of legal regulation is a set of methods and techniques that is based on the principle of the subordination of the participants in legal relationships. The subject has no choice at the point of imperative impact; it must follow any binding or prohibiting order.
The dispositive method is built on the principles of coordination and the equality of the parties and represents itself through the use of permissions. The subject of the law has the option to select a model of lawful conduct within the limits established by the rule of law.
The dispositive method of legal regulation can have many manifestations that reveal some of its rules. The method of encouragement assumes the freedom of the behavior of the subjects of the law, on whom it has a stimulating influence. A stimulus is established for the desired behavior (an reward, benefit, remuneration, etc.). This kind of effect is intended to guide the active behavior of the subjects in order to achieve a certain goal.
The method of recommendations is used in the same way as the method of encouragement, but it does not provide a specific reward. The legal provisions that implement this method contain the words «may», «should», «recommend», «suggest», etc. The real impact of the recommendation method depends upon the credibility of its source, i.e., the author.
The subjects and the methods of legal regulation allow differentiate the majority of legal norms by the branches and institutions of law.
Two related, but not univocal, concepts are employed in jurisprudence: the law system and the legislative system.
A legislative system is displayed in the composition, correlation and internal
structure of the sources of law: laws, decrees and other regulatory legal acts. A law system shows the «division» of the law itself, the legal norms, while the legislative system - its external form and - the source of law.
The correlation of law and legislation can be characterized as the relationship between internal and external forms. Because of the unity of these forms in the law, the basic units of the legislative structure of its branch are, at the same time, the branches of the law.
A law system and a legislative system are in collaboration and they penetrate into each other: A law system is contained in the legislative system and legislation secures the rights. At the same time, there are significant differences between these concepts. A law system and a legislative system are different in their constitutive elements. The primary elements of a system of law are the rule of law and the legislative system - the articles of the regulatory legal acts.
A significant difference is that a regulatory legal act is a part of the legislative system, but can include the rules of various branches of law, such as electoral laws and consumer protection acts, which are of an intersectoral nature. A legislative system has its own internal structure. It includes a branch, an interbranch and comprehensive legislation.
A law system is an abstract concept, i.e., it reflects the prevailing patterns of social life and their legal regulation. Each newly created rule of law is integrally incorporated into the relevant branch of law. The subjective factor, i.e., the will of the legislator, prevails in the formation of the legislative system. The law-making authority has the right to define, at its own discretion, the subject matter of the law, its name and the features of its content.
Legislation is a set of regulatory legal acts. According to the broad approach, legislation includes all types of regulatory legal acts; however, in the narrow sense, legislation consists of acts of the highest legal force, i.e., laws. A qualifying sign of legislation, in the narrow sense, is its acceptance by a representative body of the government in a legislative procedure. The concept of legislation not only has a special sense, but also has a generally used, ordinary sense - the set of all the sources and forms of law.
The term «legislation» can be considered using both a formal and a material approach. Thus, in the formal sense, the acts adopted by a legislator are, according to the general rule, referred to as legislation. In the material sense, all of the legal acts of state authorities comprise legislation.
In today's lawmaking process, both the narrow and broad approaches to the definition of the given term are used equally. In a broad sense, the system of legislation is understood to be the set of all regulatory legal acts, while in the narrow sense, it is understood to consist only of laws. Article 1.1 of the Code of Administrative Offences of the RF establishes a broad approach, according to which the legislation regarding administrative offences consists of both the Code and the laws on administrative offences that address subjects that the Russian Federation has accepted pursuant to it.
The legislation of the Forestry Code of the Russian Federation is understood
to consist of the code, other federal laws and the laws of the subjects of the Russian Federation. The urban planning code of the Russian Federation, in article 3, provides a very broad understanding of the term «legislation»: the code, other federal laws, other regulatory legal acts of the Russian Federation, and the laws and other statutory acts of the subjects of the RF. Article 3 of the Civil Code of the RF establishes a narrow understanding of civil legislation. The use of the narrow approach to the definition of the term «legislation» more accurately conforms to the nature and essence of legal statehood because it significantly complicates departmental lawmaking and puts it under the control of the representative authority. The Constitution of the RF establishes that by-laws should be adopted on the basis of and in accordance with law. This approach is reflected in the Civil Code of the RF: «On the basis of and in compliance with this code and other laws, decrees of the President of the Russian Federation, the Government of the Russian Federation shall have the right to issue regulations that contain provisions of civil law». The limits of departmental lawmaking are most precisely stated in the Civil Code of the RF: «The executive authorities may issue acts containing rules of civil law, in the cases and within the limits stipulated by the present Code, other laws and other legal acts» (p. 7, article 3, Civil Code of RF). Thus, in accordance with a narrow understanding of the term «legislation», departmental lawmaking is allowed by laws, which, of course, have been adopted earlier.
A law system is divided into two areas: private and public. The division of law into public and private areas originated in ancient times. Ulpiana is fairly considered to be one of the authors of the given doctrine. Thus, for example, he considered that public law referred to the position of the Roman State. He believed that the needs of individuals, their legal status and property relations were of the greatest interest in the private law. For the public law, state interests, the legal position of the state, its bodies and officials, and the regulation of relations with a strong social significance have priority.
The domestic law, as a whole, has not been characterized by a clear division into private and public law. In addition, at the beginning of the 20th century, Marxist-Leninist doctrine denied that the private law existed at all. It was predetermined by the crucial role of the state in all respects, with no exclusions.
The reform of the legal system in the 90's of the twentieth century, which was oriented towards market economic relations, led to a new phase in the problem of the relationship between the private and public law sectors. Modern legal doctrine is built on the separation of law into private and public spheres.
The division of public and private law in modern theory is accomplished through multiple criteria. One of them is the scope of the interests of legal protection. Public law refers to the interests of the state as a whole and private law refers to the interests of the individual. The method ofjudicial protection can be used as a criterion as well. Public law is protected by criminal or administrative proceedings initiated by the state authority. Private law is protected at the initiative of a person through civil proceedings. In the public law sphere, the state, by its regulations, defines the role of each subject and its rights and duties in relation to the state as a complete structure.
In the private law sphere, legally relevant decisions are made by many individuals who act independently.
The public law has the following specific features:
- a hierarchical relationship of subjects that is based on authority and, therefore, their subordinated positions relative to each other;
- imperative (mandatory) legal regulations through binding or prohibiting rules of law;
- significant sanctions for offences in the public sphere;
- a legal framework-oriented impact.
Public law regulates the following: the structure and functioning of the state and its institutions; the institutions of civil society; the mechanisms and levels of selfgovernance; the foundations of the legal system, law-making and law enforcement; and the principles, norms and institutions of international relations and international organizations.
The public law branches are as follows: constitutional, financial, administrative and procedural, criminal, criminal procedure, criminal enforcement and international humanitarian law.
Private law is based on other ideas. It is characterized by a permissible orientation and the equality and autonomy of the subjects of private law relations. The state must not arbitrarily interfere in the private sphere. The principles of private law are the freedom of contract and the free movement of goods, services and financial resources. The branches of private law are civil, family, housing law, civil procedure, etc.
Private law differs in the predominance of dispositive legal norms. The subjects of law enter into private legal relations at their own will; coercion is prohibited by law. Contracts are the predominant form of relations that are executed in the private sphere. Private law mainly focuses on the satisfaction of personal or corporate interests.
Today, a fundamental issue is the tendency for there to be close cooperation and interaction between private and public law.
Branches of Law: Concept, Types
A branch of law is the largest central unit of the law system and it emerges on the basis of the unity of the subject and the method of legal regulation. A branch of the law is understood to be a set of interrelated legal institutions that governs respectively an independent and broad area, i.e., the scope of public relations.
A branch of law regulates public relations related to the implementation of a broad scope of the substantive activities of the society, the state, the citizens and other subjects of the law. For example, civil law regulates property and the personal non-property relations associated with it, while family law regulates relations related to marriage and family member identification.
The ability to exercise the legal regulation of a vast sphere of public relations distinguishes a branch of law from a legal institution, whose regulatory functions are limited to a relatively narrow set of relations. In addition, unlike an institution, a branch of law contains a comprehensive set of legal tools and methods of legal
pressure established by the state in the process of the regulation of relations of a corresponding branch.
Every branch of law is differentiated by a specialized sectoral legal regime that characterizes the legal position of the law's subjects and the implementation of the forms of the rule of law, including law enforcement. A sectoral regime includes a set of legal institutions that are intended to provide effective legal regulation. Thus, equality, autonomy and freedom characterize the branch of civil law. The threat of punishment, responsibility and offensive effects are inherent in criminal law.
A code is an external manifestation of the presence or absence of a branch of law. It consolidates the contents of specific areas of the branch of law. Of course, the complete legislation that comprises a branch is not limited to a code; however, all other laws and other regulatory legal acts must not contradict it and must be made for the development of a codified act. The relations of the Civil Code of the RF and other civil legal acts are primarily composed in this way. Currently, there are 24 acting codes. Of these, three codes are of a purely procedural nature. The «code»-«branch» rule is not absolute. There are branches that do not have a code, for example, constitutional law. There is also a code without a branch, for example, the Urban Planning Code of the RF.
The system of Russian law is divided into the following branches: constitutional, administrative, financial, civil, family, labor, social security, natural resources, criminal, criminal procedure, civil procedure, arbitration law, criminal-executive and others. International law is not included in the national system of law; it forms its own system, which is comprised of private and public law.
Constitutional law is the system of legal norms that regulates the most important socially significant relations, i.e., the foundations of social life. Constitutional law consolidates the fundamentals of the economic, political, and spiritual areas of life in society and the legal status of individuals. Constitutional law lays the legal foundations for each of the spheres of public life. In the social and economic spheres, it defines the legal basis of property relations, the social role of the state in the political sphere,
i.e., the establishment and role of political parties, the procedure for the election of representative bodies and key officials, the organization of states, etc. In the spiritual sphere, the modern state manifests ideological pluralism.
The subject of the legal regulation of constitutional law is the social relations that define the basis of the constitutional order and the political and territorial structure of the country. Constitutional provisions govern the relations that arise in the exercise of the power of the state by the people and the procedure for the establishment and functioning of bodies of public authorities.
An important component of the subject matter of this branch is the basis of the legal status of a person and a citizen, as well as the content of the exercise of the political rights and freedoms of citizens.
The foundation of the method of the legal regulation of constitutional law is the legal guarantee; its essence is that the foundations of the constitutional order, the legal status of an individual and a citizen, the political and territorial structure, and the system of the bodies of state power and local self-government, are enshrined and
guaranteed in the basic law of the state.
In the domestic constitutional law, the mandatory method of legal regulation prevails, i.e., its norms are the only option for lawful conduct. At the same time, permissions, permissive rules, encouragement and stimulation also occur.
Constitutional law, as a branch of law, is a system of internally coherent rules that strengthen and implement the basic aspects of the legal status of individuals, public associations and other social groups, the socio-economic structure and the political system and spiritual life of the society, thereby ensuring the legitimate conditions for the exercise of state power.
The subjects of constitutional-legal relations are:
- social, national and other communities (people, ethnic groups, etc.);
- the state and state entities (the Russian Federation and its subjects);
- structured associations of citizens (parties, voter groups, etc.);
- bodies of state power, self-governments, as well as officials having constitutional powers;
- deputies of representative bodies;
- natural persons (citizens of the Russian Federation, foreign citizens, persons with dual nationality, stateless persons).
Civil law is a branch of Russian law that regulates the property and associated non-property relations that prevail between individuals, legal entities and public entities on the basis of equality, autonomy of will, property independence and the initiative of the participants in these relations.
The subjects of the legal regulation of civil law are property and associated personal non-property relations.
Property relations are the relations that concern the use, possession and disposition of things. Most of the relations that are regulated by civil law are those that involve commodities and money.
Civil law regulates the relations between persons who are engaged in entrepreneurial activities. Entrepreneurial activity is an activity that is carried out independently, at one's own risk, which is aimed at systematically deriving a profit from the use of property, the sale of goods, the performance of works or the provision of services by persons who are registered in that capacity in accordance with the law.
Non-property relations that are connected with property are the relationships that can acquire value. The objects of this kind of relations are works of art, literature, etc.
Non-property relations that are not connected with property are not regulated, but are protected by the civil law. These objects include the life and health of a citizen, the dignity of the individual and certain other benefits. A feature of these relationships is that they are not measurable in monetary terms, have no value and cannot be transferred from one entity to another.
The civil law is featured in the law system as a subject and a method of legal regulation and is expressed in the recognition of the legal equality of the parties. The implementation of equality is accomplished through the independence and autonomy of the parties. Pursuant to civil law, persons act according to their will and
are guided by their interests; their actions may be entrepreneurial and they may take any action that does not contravene the law.
The following branches of law are featured: primary, special and complex. The primary (major) branches include the following: constitutional law, administrative law, criminal law, civil law, civil procedure, administrative procedure and the law of criminal procedure. The special branches are those such as labor law, family law and others. The complex branches are formed by the integration of the norms of the primary and special branches of law. Entrepreneurial law may be an appropriate example.
The developmental process of a law system is continuous: New branches of law are formed and old ones become ineffective. For example, in the Soviet law system, there was a collective farm law that does not exist in the modern system of law. At the same time, entrepreneurial law, which was the result of the development of market relations, was formed in the Russian law system, beginning in the 90's of the 20th century.
Institutes of Law: Concept, Types
A peculiarity of a branch of law is that its basis is reflected in the institutes of law. For example, an employment contract is a system-forming institute of labor law; similarly, property is an institute of civil law and punishment is an institute of criminal law.
The following features of the institutes of law are specified: legal unity; completeness of the regulation; and legal separateness.
The legal unity of the legal norms that constitute the institute of law is manifested in the unity of the content of its norms. In the institute of law, there are general provisions, legal principles, concepts and the unity of the legal regime of the regulation of relations.
The completeness of regulation in the institute is based on the diversity of the norms of the institute. It includes both prohibiting and mandatory norms, as well as permissible norms, that allow the institute to carry out all the relevant aspects of the legal regulation of the corresponding group of public relations. Each institute performs its function and does not overlap with the other institutes of the law system.
A law institute, as a rule, is allocated and separated in a particular way in the text of a legal act through the establishment of chapters, sections, units and other elements in the regulatory legal acts. The logical sequence and perfection of law presuppose such a differentiation of its content, which is defined by the quality of the isolation of this or that set of rules.
For example, the employment contract is a kernel of the labor law branch and it unites the homogeneous rules of law with the same subjects and methods of legal regulation. If a sphere of social relations is a subject in a branch of law, then, in the institute, it is a type or kind of relations. The institute of an employment contract contains provisions that concern one legal notion.
The completeness of the regulation in the institute of the labor contract is expressed in that it includes provisions that give a definition of this phenomenon (art. 56 of the LC RF), its contents (article 57 of the LC RF), its terms, the parties, the
procedure for the conclusion (art. 59, 61 of the LC RF), the procedure for changes (art. 72-76 of the LC RF) and the termination of an employment contract (art. 77-84 of the LC RF).
The legal separateness of the institute of the labor contract consists of its outline in the text of the Labor Code of the Russian Federation in a special section III entitled «Employment Contract», which is divided into chapters: general provisions, the conclusion of an employment contract, changes to an employment contract, termination of an employment contract and the protection of the personal data of employees.
The following types of institutes are specified: branch institutes (e.g., institute of labor contract) and inter-sectoral institutes (institute of property).
Branch institutes are institutes having norms that are located in one branch of law. They reflect the originality of the branches of law. An example of a branch institute may be the liability of industrial and office workers under labor law. A clearly defined branch affiliation of this given institute is that the parties to this relationship can only be an employee and an employer. The institute is based on the powers of the administrative authority of the enterprise and its right to impose disciplinary sanctions on workers.
Inter-branch institutes include the norms of several branches of law. They regulate the relations that not only are of great importance in society, but also have a multilateral regime of legal protection. For example, the general provisions of property law and the main forms of ownership, the occurrence and termination of property rights are regulated by civil law, while the protection of property rights is provided by many branches of law, including criminal and administrative law and others. The features of property rights are reflected in the family, land and other branches of law.
Systematisation of Legislation
Systematisation is the processing and compilation of regulatory legal acts into a single, coherent system.
This activity is essential for a rapid search of the necessary norms. Systematisation is used as a way to provide the subjects of law with necessary and accurate legal information. Over time, repetitions and contradictions are created through an array of legislation; systematisation measures help to overcome these shortcomings.
The types of systematisation vary, depending upon:
- the depth of the modifications to the original specifications and guidelines. Some types of systematisation are carried out by the incorporation of legal acts without changes to their content (incorporation), while in others (for example, in codification), it is accomplished principally by updates of the legislation and through deep processing;
- the subjects that perform the systematisation. Some types of systematisation can be performed by any person (incorporation), while other types can be performed only by officially authorized persons, primarily public authorities (codification);
- the validity of the results of the systematisation. For example, the results of
incorporation will have no legal effect, but the results of codification are required to be appropriate because they are laws and other regulatory legal acts (by-laws, etc.).
The following are types of systematisation: incorporation, codification and consolidation.
Incorporation is a form of systematisation that involves a process in which regulatory legal acts are subjected to external processing and are completely or partially combined in various compilations and collections of acts. During incorporation, the content of acts is not changed. Incorporation is aimed at the external combination of the normative material and does not aim to eliminate the contradictions in the content of regulations. This task is performed during a codification process.
Incorporation is not a simple mechanical reprint of a text because it involves regulating. In this case, the external processing of acts is executed. It can be performed by making amendments to the text of the original act or by deleting withdrawn rules from a document. The collection may include only a fragment of a regulatory act that is thematically appropriate for a certain edition. There are known chronological incorporations that incorporate the acts issued during a given period of time. The Code of laws is an example of chronological incorporation. The known Russian codes are those from the year 1832, the laws of USSR and those of the RSFSR. Historical examples include the codes of Justinian and Speransky.
In modern Russia, an attempt has been made to create this kind of act. As far back as 1994, the President of the Russian Federation issued the Decree of January 28, 1994, №. 223, which established the Federal Commission on legal informatisation under the President of the Russian Federation. Among others, the Commission was given, as an objective, the preparation of the Russian Federation Code and the Code of Acts of the President and the Government of the Russian Federation. In 1998, the Decree of the President of the RF No. 170, «On measures to improve the efficiency of the work associated with the formation of the Russian Federation Code», was issued. With the changes that were made during 1995, there are now two existing clauses out of 12. All power to work on a Code is delegated to the State-Legal Department of the President of the Russian Federation, which carries out, inter alia, the preparation of the reference texts of regulations on machine-readable media and keeps them in a controlled condition.
Depending on the subject that exercises it, incorporation is divided into formal, semiformal and informal types.
Depending upon the normative material covered, incorporation may be general or partial. General incorporation includes all legislation, while partial incorporation combines groups of acts by certain features.
Incorporated documents may be static or developing.
Legal reference systems are an example of a developing incorporation. For example, the computer legal reference system «ConsultantPlus» contains legal acts that have been previously exposed to professional legal processing.
Legal processing is the identification of relations between documents and the recording of the identified relations in specific forms (references, notes, reference information), as well as the creation of document editions when they are edited. An
incorporation of the reference system can be performed upon the request of the user using grounds such as subject, document type, date, keywords, and more.
Codification is a type of systematisation conducted by the legislative bodies in order to regulate legal norms.
Codification is used for the coherent regulation of a branch of law and the comprehensive legislative regulation of social relations in a separate area. Codification reflects a greater concentration of normative material in a particular sphere of public relations.
Stability and the well-formed social relations that are the subject of the legal regulation of the Code are of particular importance in the segregation of codified acts into special types. The following features of codified acts may be specified:
- high legal integrity and internal consistency of the codified acts;
- stability and sustainability;
- a wide range of regulated relations.
An important prerequisite for codification also is the preparedness of the legislation for codification and the degree of its development. This means that the acts that are to be codified should represent a certain established group.
The basic condition for codification is the requirement related to its subject, which may be a group of regulatory legal acts that represents a system that has the specifications of a branch of law. Thus, codification is not a variation of current lawmaking process. Based on this, the code and the current law differ considerably in their structure, their roles in the system of law and the order in which their regulations are formed. Important conditions for the adoption of an act in the form of a code are:
- the stability and sustainability of the social relations that make up the subject of its legal regulation;
- an established legal confirmation of the relations;
- the branch affiliation of the provisions of the regulatory legal acts that are expected to form the basis of the codification.
Consolidation is a form of systematisation that involves a process in which previously published regulatory legal acts on a particular issue are combined (merged) into a single act.
This form of organization has a derived complex character. It can be performed in several ways; in particular, consolidation can be carried out by legislators through the adoption of a new edition of any law.
The aim of consolidation is the elimination of duplication. It decreases the number of acts, although their content is not changed except for editorial corrections. The consolidation process allows the unification of terms and the alignment of styles. The new act, that has consolidated the old documents, fully terminates the documents that have become a part of it.
Consolidation, which occupies an intermediate position between incorporation and codification, is different from them. The subjects that can implement the systematisation differ from those that can implement incorporation. Incorporation may be performed by any entity, but consolidation must be performed by a lawmaking body. The results of these two types of systematisation are different as
well. Incorporation results in compilations and collections, while consolidation results in the adoption of a regulatory act. Consolidation differs from codification with respect to the depth of the processing of the regulatory material. Codification provides important updates, while consolidation provides only editorial improvements.
Systematisation is also conducted by the issuance of a law that has the same name as previously issued law and that replaces the previous version. For example, in 1995, Federal Law No. 154-FZ, «On general principles of organization of local self-government», was adopted, but changes were made to it until October 6, 2003. A new Federal Law No. 154-FZ was adopted on September 6,1995. Article 84 of the new law revoked the previous Federal Law No. 154-FZ.
Recordkeeping is another type of systematisation that is recognized as a method of regulatory information storage. In any case, recordkeeping is an independent kind of legal work. It includes a collection of regulatory acts as well as their processing and storage.
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