The concept of legal policy of the Republic of Kazakhstan

In the past several years a number of important legislative acts was adopted, all of which were conductive to progressive development of governmental and non-governmental institutions, ensuring sustainable social and economic development of Kazakhstan.

Implementation of the Concept of Legal Policy of the Republic of Kazakhstan resulted in substantial renewal of the major branches of the national legislation (constitutional, administrative, civil, banking, tax, fiscal, customs, ecological, criminal, criminal-procedural, and correctional legislations).

New unified legislative codes were developed and adopted: Forestry Code, Land Code, Customs Code, and Water Code; Labor Code and Ecological Code; Fiscal Code and Internal Revenue Code (Tax Code). The government adopted measures that allowed bringing the legislative process to a new quality level, some of which include: long term planning of legislative activity; introduction of the process of expert evaluation (legal, anti-corruption, criminological and other evaluations) of draft legislation; comprehensive financial support of adopted laws.

At the same time those fundamental transformations that occur in the world economy and politics, globalization processes, as well as internal dynamics of the country do not allow stopping at the currently achieved level. In order to ensure the compliance of national legislation with the present challenges it is important to further improve legislative and law enforcement practices in the country.

In Kazakhstan the first decade of the 21st century was marked by the new

phase of constitutional development. On May 21, 2007 the Law on Introduction of Changes and Addenda to the Constitution of the Republic of Kazakhstan was adopted, introducing amendments that were critically important for the country. At the same time the basic parameters of Kazakhstani model of state structure were maintained, given that they stood the test of time.

During the process of constitutional reform and in the framework of this model the government initiated modernization of the system of relations of power. It allowed increasing the role and influence of the chambers of Parliament, which since then held greater responsibility for the state of affairs in the country.

Owing to the general direction towards the comprehensive development of civil society institutions, harmonization of relations between the government and society, many constitutional bans and limitations were removed, allowing for greater interaction between governmental and non-governmental institutions. The system of local governance was modernized, which nowadays fully corresponds to the needs and current conditions of our country.

At the constitutional level a new stimulus was given to the new phase of judicial reform, aimed at reinforcement of the independence of courts in the administration of justice. The area of application of death penalty was reduced and limited to the crimes of terrorism aggravated by death of people, or especially grave crimes committed in the time of war, which, in the conditions of Kazakhstan, means the actual abolition of death penalty. The concept of habeas corpus was introduced; and the constitutional ban on investigations held by the court and prosecutor’s office was removed.

Therefore, the implemented reform was aiming at further democratization of state and public institutions. All these systemic decisions that received constitutional recognition should find their further realization in the existing legislation of the Republic of Kazakhstan.

In order to increase the effectiveness of legislative activity it is important to continue the work on systematization of existing legislation, further consolidation by branches of legislation. It is necessary to remove outdated and repeated articles from the legislation, to fill in the gaps in legal regulation, to exclude internal contradictions present in the existing law, as well as to minimize the use of legal references in current laws and increase the practice of adopting directly applicable laws within the scope of issues that can be dealt with by adopted laws according to the Constitution.

Special attention should be given to forecasting and analytical support of legislative activity, which would be based on continuous monitoring of trends in the development of legislative branches and legal systems, as well as on analysis of law enforcement practice.

This will allow establishing a modern regulatory system vividly reflecting all phases of legislative and law enforcement practice for each adopted law: its development, adoption, enforcement, introduction of amendments and supplements, ceasing to be in force or development of a new law. These procedures and mechanisms assist to optimization and systematization of legislative activity of governmental structures. Extensive application of sociological methods in legislative monitoring will provide for increased consideration of public opinion in the course of implementation of legal policy.

International standards of legislative expertise and analysis will be introduced, which will allow for comprehensive consideration of interests of civilians, society, and the state, as well as ensure effectiveness, efficiency, and rationality of legislative norms.

It is necessary to provide legislative grounds for all types of legal expert evaluations, by defining their criteria, objectives, as well as the phases of their execution. Such an approach to expert evaluations will allow ensuring complete consideration of financial-economic and socio-political consequences of adoption of legislative and regulatory acts.

There is a need to apply expert evaluations in relation to the drafts of international treaties of the Republic of Kazakhstan.

Therefore, the development of expert evaluation system will help resolve the issue of development of drafts of regulatory and legislative acts corresponding to actual situation and perspectives in the development of society and the state.

At present there are 17 identified branches of legislation, regulation of which shall be executed by relevant codes. At the same time unification or codification of laws is not the only instrument of systematization of legislation. It is expedient to use other instruments, such as consolidation, which represent the combination of legal norms regulating certain relationships in one single legislative act.

In this connection there is a long-term objective to introduce and legally establish the concept of “consolidated” or “comprehensive” laws that would regulate legal relationships of complex nature. As for unification or codification of laws, this supreme form of legislative systematization should be used with caution and limitations, and mainly towards the well-established branches of legislation, in those spheres of legal relationships where it would be impossible to achieve any effective regulation without such codification.

Adoption of any code should be preceded by large legislative and law enforcement practice, its rigorous monitoring, analysis and evaluation, exercise on systematic basis. The branch of law should “ripen” to the level of codification.

Any society has a complex system of socially important interests. Advocacy of such interests is implemented through various means, including official and unofficial lobbying of these interests during the legislative process. Due to this fact it is necessary to consider the lobbying of interests as the present phenomenon and to supply it with legal framework and regulate any relationships related to propaganda, development, discussion and adoption of draft laws by the Parliament.

It is important to continuously involve in the legislative activity the representatives of general public, non-governmental organizations, and associations representing the interests of private businesses. It is necessary to continuously improve and increase the level of legislative techniques that determine the quality of legislative processes in particular and the documentation processing efficiency in the state apparatus in general.

Perspectives in the development of legal regulatory mechanisms are largely connected to a wide-scale introduction of information technologies in legislative and law enforcement process. In this connection and in order to establish the basic components for the infrastructure of e-government, to develop and effectively introduce the database of legislative acts it is considered optimal to implement the Reference Bank of Regulatory and Legislative Acts in electronic format. At the same time it is necessary to supplement our legislation with provisions envisaging the electronic format of a regulatory legal act, which will become an important step in the process of informational support of the national law.

Implementation of further measures is required for improvement of the existing legislative practice. The content and the quality of laws responsive to the transformations undergoing in the country will be ensured through effective functioning of the institutes of government, as well as through assurance of constructive and dynamic interaction between legislative and executive branches of power.

Therefore there is a need for a unified legal policy based on the current trends in societal development, on acquired experience and scientifically proven fundamental views of short-term and long-term perspectives in the development of Kazakhstani state and society.

Used and recommended literature:

1. Хропанюк В.Н. Теория государства и права. - М.: ИПП. «Отечество», 1993.

2. Матузов Н.И., Малько А.В. Теория государства и права. М.: Юристъ, 2004.

3. H. Kelsen. General theory of law and state. Cambridge, Massachusetts. Harvard University Press, 1949.

4. G. Williams. Learning the Law. Eleventh Edition. Stevens. 1982.

5. W. Ebenstein. The Pure Theory of Law. New York, 1969.

Answer the following questions using the information from this text:

1. What is a difference between a custom and a law?

2. How are laws made?

3. How does law reflect the life of a given society?

4. What is the relationship between law and society?

5. What are the special features of law?

6. What are the functions of law?

7. What are the subjects of the national law system?

8. Give several opinions to the concept of legal policy of the Republic of Kazakhstan.

Дата добавления: 2014-10-17