Liberal legal aspects of a law-abiding state

A democratic law-abiding state entrenched in the Russian Constitution is a special state construction with generally known legal characteristics. However, there are many liberal legal phenomena beyond their limits including personal freedom, justice, common good etc. that more or less influence the legal quality of the construction above. In the conceptual model of a law abiding state the term "right" is closely connected with the term "freedom" and what is more, the law is determined as a measure of freedom. According to V.S.Nersesyants, there has not been developed any other form of existence and expression of freedom in public life yet except a legal one. People are free to the best of their equality and are equal to the best of their freedom. Being aware of his rights, a person ought to be aware of his duties, understand what he is allowed to do and not allowed to do, he must acknowledge, take into account and respect the same rights of other people. Law and order is a living system of the mutually acknowledged rights and duties; it connects people on the basis of mutuality. Asserting his rights, a person wants them to be observed and acknowledged by other people. Moreover, he is obliged to observe and acknowledge the rights of others. The majority rule is one of the democratic principles of the development of a law abiding state. It is exercised in the forms of direct and representative democracy. However, this principle must not be absolutized and considered to be an irreproachably democratic one if the right of the minority to oppose is set at naught. In a law abiding state both the majority and minority of citizens are absolutely equal in their rights and duties. History knows the examples when the majority supported wrong and even destructive actions and decisions by virtue of the lack of information, engulfed emotions, tendentious propaganda and other factors. Nowadays, Russia has no mechanism of constructive civil criticism of government and authority on the whole (random reaction of the President to some appeals of citizens does not change this situation); the electors can neither influence their representatives in state bodies nor the adoption of political decisions. Being reorganized and restored as a locally authoritative, the state power ignores public opinion and doing this, it discredits those symbols of democracy which were closely connected with the existing regime in the people's consciousness. There are different tendencies in the political life of Russia. Although, being continuously accumulated, the political experience proves to be a determinant factor of the political development of any country both at the level of state power and in mass consciousness.

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