The article offers a source-critical analysis of the work Gewohnheitsrecht und Codification in Russland (“Customary Law and Codification in Russia”), written in 1833 by Alexander Magnus Fromhold von Reutz, an eminent Russian legal scholar and one of the founders of the Dorpat School of Law. The article outlines the main content of the work, evaluates its key provisions and conclusions, identifies prospects for further scientific and practical application of its findings, and highlights the scholarly and historical significance of the text. The first part of the article addresses external criticism of the work: it establishes the origin date of the source, its formal attributes, authorship, structure, presentation style, and other characteristics. The second, third, and fourth parts are devoted to internal criticism, which involves identifying philological and factual features of the text, analyzing von Reutz’s scholarly views, and assessing the reliability of his conclusions. The second part also examines the concept of customary law and clarifies its role within the system of legal regulation, including its relationship with statutory law. The third part explores von Reutz’s reflections on legislative activity in Russia during the first half of the 19th century, noting its strengths and weaknesses, and discusses the requirements he formulated for legislators based on his observations. The fourth part analyzes von Reutz’s views on the interpretation of laws and the challenges arising in law enforcement as a result. The author of this article emphasizes the continued relevance of the ideas put forward by A. M. F. von Reutz in his work Gewohnheitsrecht und Codification in Russland, supporting the arguments with examples from modern legal science and practice. The results of this study highlight the prospects for exploring the legacy of pre-revolutionary legal scholarship and adapting some of its provisions to present-day realities.

This article examines the legal norms of the Russian Federation regulating relationships that arise in the course of road activities. The purpose of the study is to analyze the scope and content of road activities, define the limits of public authorities' powers in this area, identify the legal entities directly engaged in such activities—including based on judicial practice—and propose solutions to address violations of antitrust law. The study is grounded in a range of scientific methodologies, including formal legal analysis, structural-functional analysis, comparative method, and the systematic review of academic and regulatory sources. The research draws on the scholarly work of experts in administrative and financial law. The findings suggest that the direct execution of road activities is not legally assigned to public authorities. These bodies merely facilitate the process through administrative and organizational measures, including budgetary funding. The creation of state institutions (including via the reorganization of unitary enterprises) and granting them the right to carry out road works or services results in market monopolization, unjustified state preferences, and violations of public procurement laws. Based on legal analysis and law enforcement practice, the article argues that road activity is an economic function that should be carried out by entities of all forms of ownership and individual entrepreneurs engaged under the law. It is redundant and inappropriate for direct implementation by public authorities. Funding for such activities from the Russian Federation’s budgetary system should be provided through contracts concluded to fulfill public (municipal) needs. Additional financing mechanisms could include budget subsidies for legal entities and entrepreneurs supplying goods, works, and services, or through concession agreements. The study concludes with recommendations for amending federal legislation to ensure consistent legal regulation of the issues discussed.

The relevance of this study lies in the importance of the tasks assigned to federal executive authorities in implementing state control (supervision) over the circulation of civilian weapons, as well as in the specific nature of the administrative and legal regulation in this field. Object of the study: public relations arising in the context of administrative and legal regulation of control over the circulation of civilian weapons. Subject of the study: federal legislation and subordinate normative legal acts that define the organization and procedures for implementing control and supervisory functions, as well as the system of state authorities and their competencies in this area. Methodology: The research is based on both general and specialized scientific methods, including analytical, comparative-legal, system-structural, formal-logical, historical-legal, and sociological approaches. Problem Statement: The article highlights the lack of a clearly structured system of federal executive bodies responsible for the administrative and legal regulation of control and supervisory powers in the sphere of weapon circulation. It also addresses the limitations of applying general legal normative acts to this specific area of control (supervision) at the federal level. Hence, the study emphasizes the need to define a comprehensive list of applicable normative acts, their scope, and to establish a coherent system of control authorities with effective interagency coordination. Purpose: The aim of the study is to provide a scholarly analysis of the existing system of state control bodies overseeing the circulation of civilian weapons, their powers, and the legislative framework that governs their supervisory activities. Key findings: The research concludes that the legal framework regulating the organization and procedures for control (supervision) in the area of civilian weapon circulation is of a special nature. General legal norms that govern state control and supervision do not fully apply to this domain. This highlights the necessity for a distinct legal terminology and for harmonizing all relevant legal norms within this regulated sphere. The study also outlines and analyzes the control and supervisory powers of federal executive authorities involved in this area.

This article addresses one of the most pressing and debated topics in the field of environmental law: the issue of codifying contemporary environmental legislation and the need to develop and adopt an Environmental Code of the Russian Federation. To ensure a comprehensive and thorough analysis, the article examines the current environmental legislation, its structure, and the system of sources within environmental law. The author particularly emphasizes that the large number of legislative acts across various levels significantly complicates both the implementation of environmental norms and legal enforcement practices. One of the key factors contributing to these challenges is identified as the absence of a unified codified legal act – namely, the Environmental Code of the Russian Federation. The article reviews research by leading experts and scholars in the fields of environmental protection and natural resource management, with a focus on the codification of environmental law. While there is general agreement on the need to develop a single codified legal act, discussions continue regarding the structure of the future Environmental Code and how to address the vast body of existing normative acts in environmental and natural resource legislation. Regional legislation in the field of environmental protection and resource use is also examined, with particular attention given to the practices of certain regions of the Russian Federation (including the Republics of Tatarstan, Bashkortostan, Sakha (Yakutia), and the city of St. Petersburg) in adopting regional environmental codes. The article concludes that these regional codes tend to be declarative in nature and largely replicate the Federal Law of January 10, 2002, No. 7-FZ “On Environmental Protection”. Furthermore, it notes a lack of attention from regional lawmakers to natural, climatic, and other regional specificities during the drafting process. Despite these shortcomings, the emergence of regional environmental codes can be seen as a step toward the codification of environmental and natural resource norms at the regional level – representing incremental progress toward developing and adopting a federal Environmental Code for the Russian Federation.

This article provides a comprehensive political and legal analysis of law enforcement agencies as the primary actors in law enforcement. It identifies conceptual challenges in understanding both law enforcement agencies and their functions. Using methods from legal political science and a broad array of sources, the author defines the essential political and socio-legal characteristics of law enforcement agencies. The implementation of law enforcement activities through state coercion should constitute the core responsibility of authorized state bodies, which are equipped with the necessary resources and tools. The law enforcement system may also include government institutions that directly execute functions and powers on behalf of law enforcement agencies. The legal objective of the law enforcement system is to uphold public order, while its practical goal is to ensure security in specific spheres of public life. Service in law enforcement is a distinct form of public service and is carried out on a professional basis. The identified features are synthesized in the author's definition of the term “law enforcement agencies”. The diversity of such agencies predetermines the specific nature of their political functions, shaped by their institutional position and role within the state apparatus and in line with official policy. The internal policy of each law enforcement agency is built on a strict organizational structure and hierarchy. Political orientations and ambitions of senior leadership play a crucial role – not only in shaping internal interactions among staff but also in determining the external goals and strategic positioning of operational and other personnel. The leadership of law enforcement agencies is obligated to align both internal and external operations with the documented political will of central government authorities. These agencies require a clear framework of priorities, objectives, and an appropriate ideological foundation for their activities. The essential role of law enforcement agencies in the political sphere is most evident in their efforts to counter global threats such as corruption, terrorism, and extremism.

This article examines one of the key challenges in the implementation of the unified monthly child benefit: ensuring that the assistance is granted only to families who genuinely meet the established need criteria. The basis for the benefit’s provision is a comprehensive need assessment, which is not always unambiguously perceived by society and often leads to attempts by certain individuals to circumvent eligibility requirements in order to receive the benefit. The subject of the study includes the provisions of Federal Law No. 81-FZ of May 19, 1995 “On State Benefits for Citizens with Children”, as well as the Rules approved by the Government of the Russian Federation that regulate the assignment and payment of monthly benefits for childbirth and child-rearing in the aspects not directly defined by the law. The goal of this article is to determine how effectively the current Rules ensure that the unified benefit is granted exclusively to families who actually satisfy the need criteria. By analyzing both the regulatory framework and the previous practices of providing social support based on need assessments, the article demonstrates that it is impossible to fully eliminate the risk of benefits being awarded to those who do not genuinely qualify. This issue stems not only from the high level of informal employment and the resulting underreporting of income, but also from deficiencies in how certain types of income are accounted for. The article also highlights common schemes used to bypass the so-called “zero-income rule,” such as fictitious divorces or registering as a self-employed individual subject to professional income tax in order to acquire or retain benefit eligibility. The author evaluates recent amendments made to the Rules in response to such practices. The article concludes that the most effective countermeasure is legislative reform that renders circumvention either futile or prohibitively difficult. However, this approach comes at a cost: increased regulatory complexity and the need for additional oversight mechanisms, which in turn require more administrative resources.

The issues of administrative discretion and the formation of contemporary Russian police law are far from new to the field of administrative law science. Nevertheless, they remain highly relevant today, as their thorough exploration supports the alignment of Russian state-legal institutions and practices with the standards of a lawful, democratic state. An analysis of publications on administrative discretion and police law, including those addressing the evolution of related scientific concepts, unfortunately reveals that many of these works contain judgments, assessments, and conclusions that lack scientific novelty, are unreliable, or even improperly borrowed from scholarly sources not belonging to the authors themselves. The purpose of this article – prompted by reading A. N. Zherebtsov's textbook “Essays on the History of Russian Administrative Law Science” (Moscow: Prospekt, 2021) – is to restore fairness in the evaluation of the development of scholarly ideas on administrative discretion and police law. The main focus is placed on visually demonstrating, first, the inaccuracy of Zherebtsov's assessments regarding pre-revolutionary and Soviet legal scholars' views on administrative discretion, and second, instances of improper appropriation by Professor K. S. Belsky. Based on the volume of his publications, Belsky appears to hold a leading position among those studying police law. The article highlights that some positions and conclusions originally formulated within post-Soviet administrative legal science – particularly by the present author – were inappropriately used in Belsky’s work, especially those concerning police law as a developing sub-branch of modern administrative law. The article concludes that administrative discretion and police law are among the highly specialized topics in contemporary Russian administrative legal scholarship. These topics are not easily accessible and require researchers to deeply immerse themselves in the legal subject matter and carefully study the historical development of related legal doctrines. Further productive research into administrative discretion will be possible only if scholars focus on developing principles for the exercise of discretionary powers by public administration, drafting legislative proposals based on those principles, and proposing legal measures to define the depth and scope of judicial review of such discretion. As for police law, the current stagnation in this area could be overcome by drafting a new codified federal legislative act – the Police Code of the Russian Federation or the Code of the Russian Federation on Security (the latter title currently appears more suitable). Bringing such a proposal into the practical legal sphere will undoubtedly stimulate renewed research interest in police law.

This article addresses a key issue in the legal qualification of murders described in subparagraphs “b”, “z”, and “k” of Part 2, Article 105 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, particularly when such murders are committed in conjunction with other crimes. This matter has long been the subject of debate among legal practitioners. By analyzing the relevant provisions of the Criminal Code, rulings from the Constitutional Court and the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation, academic literature, and judicial practice, the author arrives at the following conclusions. Murder committed in connection with kidnapping, robbery, extortion, banditry, rape, or violent sexual acts – as outlined in the aforementioned subparagraphs – is a form of intentional homicide in which a causal and mutually dependent relationship exists between the murder and the accompanying crime. In such cases, the act of murder is driven by the commission of one of the specified crimes. Murder associated with these other offenses does not fall under the exception listed in Part 1 of Article 17 of the Criminal Code of RF, which relates to the legal concept of concurrence of crimes (i.e., committing two or more separate crimes). This is because in each of the qualifying scenarios under subparagraphs “b”, “z”, and “k” of Part 2, Article 105, the law establishes liability for a single, aggravated crime – namely, murder with a specific aggravating circumstance (i.e., its connection to one of the listed crimes) – rather than for multiple crimes. However, the article argues that when both the murder and the associated crime are committed, they should be qualified cumulatively. That is, legal qualification should involve both Part 2, Article 105 and the relevant article corresponding to the accompanying offense: Articles 126 (Kidnapping), 131 (Rape), 132 (Violent Sexual Acts), 162 (Robbery), 163 (Extortion), or 209 (Banditry) of the Criminal Code of RF.

The author draws attention to the fact that, for various reasons, law enforcement agencies are not sufficiently focused on the timely and thorough detection of crimes committed using information and communication technologies or within the sphere of computer data. Reports of such crimes are often not pursued immediately, and in many cases are only addressed long after being filed – typically by personnel who lack the necessary skills, forensic tools, operational-search capacities, and procedural authority. If the victim has not suffered material damage or if the damage is relatively minor, refusals to initiate criminal proceedings are often issued on questionable grounds. The article presents and substantiates the hypothesis that the actual scale of cybercrime is many times greater than what is officially recorded. As a result, the stakeholders in criminal policy lack an accurate understanding of the situation in this area of crime control. The author emphasizes that in the face of such an information deficit, it is impossible to make informed managerial decisions regarding the optimal allocation of existing resources, the need for and extent of reinforcement, existing organizational and legal shortcomings, or effective strategies for improvement. This problematic situation is rooted in the fact that essential principles are neither established in criminal-policy documents nor reflected in real-world criminal policy. Current policy encourages law enforcement to present a distorted but tolerable picture of criminological conditions, rather than confront the unfavorable realities on the ground. The article concludes by articulating key principles for an effective cybercrime strategy – principles that must be formally outlined at the conceptual level and consistently implemented in practice.