Legal Nature of Public Authority: Doctrine and Law

Abstract

The constitutional reform of 2020 made it relevant to develop a doctrinal and legal description of public power. The existing interpretations of its legal nature are often different, even mutually exclusive. This situation makes it necessary to expand the methodological foundations behind the theoretical model of public power. The author identified public power based on the differences in philosophy, management theory, political science, and sociology, on the one hand, and constitutional studies, on the other. The hypothesis of the cyclical development of constitutional law, both as a branch of law and as a science, made it possible to reconstruct the ideas of public power in the Russian doctrine of constitutional law at the turn of the XIX–XX centuries. These ideas proved systematic and logically complete because they interpreted public power as a special subjective right implemented by the community. The concepts of public power in the national constitutional studies demonstrated continuity, especially against V. E. Chirkin’s collectivist theory of public power. However, the importance of public understanding of the legal nature of public power remains underestimated. This flaw is also typical of the latest theoretical models of public power, which were affected by the constitutional reform of 2020, as demonstrated by some recent federal laws.