Contesting of normative legal acts in court: Procedure de lege lata and ways of improving

Abstract

The article is devoted to the analysis of judicial contesting of normative acts in civil procedure, its types, nature and correlation. There are two types of judicial contesting of normative acts in Russia — abstract and casual. First of them is implemented in administrative justice, second is in civil and administrative justice. Abstract judicial contesting of normative acts should be considered as a universal mechanism for checking the legality of the normative act, implemented in administrative justice proceedings. On the contrary, casual contesting of normative acts is exercised both in administrative and civil judicial proceedings and is essentially part of the procedure for the court to choose the rule of positive law to be applied in a particular case, the direct subject of which is not the verification of the legitimacy of the normative act. The competence of the courts, in any case, to assess the normative act for its compliance with the normative act of greater legal force lies not so much in the key of judicial contesting of normative acts, as in the sphere of implementation of judicial discretion in the choice of applicable law. The authors criticize the abstract type of judicial contesting of normative acts in relation to the limitation of the range of its objects to the limits of the operation of the normative act in time. In accordance with the principles of civil and administrative justice, the authors argue that normative acts that have lost their force at the time of application to the court should relate to the objects of judicial contestation.