In the article, ensuring legality in public administration is considered as a system that includes a subsystem of general conditions (prerequisites) and a subsystem of special (legal) methods and means. This system is integrated and closely related to the public administration system. The general conditions and prerequisites for ensuring legality have a direct impact on both the public administration system and the formation of special (legal) ways and means of ensuring legality. State control, prosecutorial supervision, and disciplinary responsibility are used to ensure the legality of the activities of public administration entities themselves. Public administration entities, through a direct communication mechanism, apply to management facilities such methods and means of ensuring legality as administrative supervision (state control (supervision)) and administrative coercion, including measures of administrative responsibility. Organizations and individual citizens (public administration entities) use various forms of public control, administrative and judicial appeals, to ensure the legality of the activities of public administration entities within the framework of feedback. It is concluded that legality in public administration is based on the positive legal responsibility of citizens and public servants.

It has been determined that public administration and the public administration system, not being mentioned in any legislative acts, and being currently only purely scientific categories, are understood differently in the literature. It is noted that, in addition to state and municipal bodies, organizations implementing publicly significant functions and vested with specific state powers have inevitably come to be considered public administration entities. It is concluded that the specific nature of the very concept of “public administration” inevitably implies the significant participation of civil society institutions in its implementation, and that, overall, the public administration system consists of three subsystems. It is argued that the integrated degree of prevention, detection, and suppression of violations of the law within the public administration system as a whole, when properly organized, is higher than the respective combined capabilities of all three subsystems comprising this system individually.

This article analyzes the decisions and actions of government agencies to ensure the rule of law and protect the rights and freedoms of citizens and territories using the most common examples of social, natural, and man-made emergencies in recent years. The conclusions are based on the assertion that legality and expediency are not contradictory categories at all, but, on the contrary, situations often arise where the goal of saving people and ensuring their safety is possible by making decisions that go even beyond the legal framework. The widely held principle that legality is primary and expediency cannot justify breaking the law has been proven wrong. Such situations are entirely possible, as COVID-19 and the special military operation provide clear evidence. Another issue is the need to clarify the reasons for such decisions and do everything possible to bring regulatory legal acts into the required state as quickly as possible. This is evidenced not only by Part 3 of Article 55 of the Constitution of the Russian Federation, but also by the practical experience of decisions and actions by government bodies.

Based on an analysis of legislation (including retrospective analysis) and law enforcement practices, statistical data, and scholarly works on ensuring the legality of administrative legal acts by the prosecutor’s office, this article explores the domestic experience of its formation and development. It also highlights the areas of prosecutorial work and the means of prosecutorial influence throughout the long history of prosecutorial oversight. Based on the modern concept of legality, this article describes the procedures established by federal legislation for the prosecutor’s office, integrated with the constitutional lawmaking mechanism, to prevent the adoption of legal acts that contradict the Constitution of the Russian Federation and other laws and to restore the rule of law. Further improvement of the oversight mechanism and its implementation requires consideration of the need for preventive work and legal education of officials, as well as research into the principles of legality, objective criteria for the legality of administrative acts, and the development of scientific understanding of the phenomena that lead to distortions of legality in public administration, measures to prevent them, and the forms and limits of prosecutorial response.

This article analyzes a category that is new to Russian legal scholarship — discretionary nihilism — which is defined as a distortion of the legal consciousness of the law enforcer, manifested in a negative attitude toward administrative discretion and a refusal to exercise one’s discretionary powers. The author examines discretionary nihilism from an ontological perspective, constructing a specific taxonomy — that is, the relationship between discretionary nihilism and various concepts, in particular «legality», «normativity», and «public administration». To this end, the author first highlights certain differences between discretionary nihilism and legal nihilism, demonstrating the correlation and interdependence between them. The author then discusses legitimate and illegitimate legality, arguing that discretionary nihilism is closely linked to the latter. In the final part of the study, the focus shifts to the conflict between the ought (normative-legal) and the is (normative-factual); it is shown that the triumph of the ought gives rise to discretionary nihilism. In conclusion, the author invites representatives of the academic community to join the discussion on discretionary nihilism.

The fundamental categories of German public law are examined, primarily “public administration” and “law enforcement.”

The German administrative-legal doctrine of public administration emphasizes, first and foremost, its basis of authority — the subject of public authority — the Öffentliche Gewalt (public authority) is also the bearer of state authority (Staatsgewalt).

Considerable attention is paid to the tenets of public administration, namely, direct state administration (unmittelbare Staatsverwaltung), which always takes into account the federal basis of German statehood, namely, the differences in the powers of the federation and the states with the regional administrative bodies under their jurisdiction.

The German administrative-legal doctrine takes into account the status of ordinary subjects of public administration (mittelbare Staatsverwaltung), subordinate to municipal executive bodies. Participants in direct public administration and ordinary subjects are equally endowed with the powers of administrative law subjects (Verwaltungsträger).

German General Administrative Law (Allgemeines Verwaltungsrecht) equally considers various organizational and legal forms of administrative law subjects that combine public and private law regulation. These subjects primarily include corporations (associations) (Körperschaften), institutions (Anstalten), and foundations (Stiftungen).

The pluralism of administrative law subjects, namely corporations, institutions, and foundations, is determined not only by their public legal purpose and the socially significant goals of their activities, but also — especially in the case of institutions and foundations — by the specific target nature of corporate asset turnover.

The binarity of the German federation is considered a fundamental principle of the activities of all its public bodies (Bundesstaatsprinzip), including: and in relation to the delimitation of powers between federal and regional authorities. The three-tiered structure of regional governments is characteristic of most of Germany’s federal states, primarily due to the national and historical characteristics, ethnic, and religious traditions of each of the sixteen states. However, there are also specific differences in the structure of executive bodies in some federal states, particularly Brandenburg, Lower Saxony, Schleswig-Holstein, and Saarland.

Problems, including chronic administrative ones, in the public administration system are being studied by many management experts. Some, if not all, of these problems are linked to the lack of a common conceptual framework for their resolution, as well as a lack of unified approaches agreed upon with civil society regarding the areas (or, if you will, the breakthrough areas) where the state should focus its primary efforts and resources within public administration. The increasing frequency of appeals to the idea of creating a «ministry of happiness» worldwide, and in the Russian Federation in particular, has prompted reflection on this topic and an attempt to assess the viability and feasibility of implementing such a proposal.

The article discusses the improvement of the mechanism for countering corruption in the activities of public authorities as a means of ensuring the rule of law, and raises the question of its content. The article assesses the role of means of ensuring the rule of law and highlights the elements in the mechanism for countering corrupt acts of behavior.

The study of legal acts regulating anti-corruption measures and doctrinal provisions has provided significant practical suggestions, including the allocation of an independent chapter in the Code of Administrative Offenses of the Russian Federation, which correlates with criminal law norms that contain administrative legal preclusion.

This article examines current issues in the field of administrative coercion and the impact of changes in social relations on it. Current trends in this area, such as technologization, cross-border nature, and evidence-based approach, are highlighted. These trends, serving as the basis for the transformation of administrative coercion, suggest the search for new doctrinal solutions both in terms of improving national administrative legislation and its interaction with international law. They also require interdisciplinary research, emphasizing the need for coordinated efforts from representatives of various fields of knowledge. It is concluded that, in modern conditions, its role in ensuring the rule of law and security is increasing. Therefore, a balance between these two goals is necessary. Particular attention is paid to the significance of the achieved level of technological development in the context of improving the mechanism of administrative coercion, including in terms of its composition, forces, and means. It is argued that the emergence of new technologies requires a revision of traditional approaches to administrative coercion.

This article examines the legal regulation of liability for so-called contraventions in Canada and some of its provinces, in particular, Alberta, Ontario and Saskatchewan. Contraventions in Canadian law are distinguished from criminal offenses. At the federal level, the general issues of the substantive and procedural regulation of this type of legal liability have not been fully resolved, including the conceptual framework that allows the use of various synonyms of the term “contravention”. This predetermined the advanced legal regulation in the provinces of Canada.Contraventions compositions are established, as a rule, by subordinate regulations. In some regulations of the provinces of Canada, there is the term “administrative penalty”, considered as a measure of responsibility for an offense. The procedure for dealing with such offences is determined by the provinces. The conclusion is drawn about the establishment of the institution of administrative responsibility in the law of Canada and its provinces as an important means of ensuring legality. The contraventions design is at the heart of this institution. The legal regulation of administrative responsibility in Canada is based on the principle of federalism.

This study is about the systematization of regulatory legal acts of the constituent entities of the Russian Federation in the field of tourism, as one of the actively developing sectors of the national economy with significant growth potential in the near future, which determines the relevance of the topic chosen for the study. Public relations in the field of tourism activities at the regional level are regulated by a significant volume and variety of regulatory legal acts, which indicates the need to bring this array into an orderly state and systematize them. The systematization of the legal framework, in turn, is a key condition for ensuring legality in the area under consideration. Several generally accepted criteria were chosen as the basis for this systematization. The primary classification criterion is the legal force of acts. In accordance with this criterion, groups were identified: Constitutions (Charters) of federal subjects, regional legislation, and acts of the highest bodies and officials of the subject. The next criterion for division was the subject of regulation, where acts are divided into groups: strategic and programmatic documents regulating tourism activities, aimed at developing tourism infrastructure in the region, related to image policy, and aimed at developing human resources for the tourism industry. The final criterion for dividing the entire body of legal acts in the field of tourism at the regional level is the nature of the norms contained therein (substantive and procedural). However, the list of classification criteria, as well as the groups of acts that meet a given criterion, remains open and can be expanded if necessary.

The list of subjects engaged in legal education of the population is being analysed. In this context, attention is drawn to public authorities: legislative, executive, judicial, as well as those not related to any of the branches of government. In addition, commercial and non-profit organizations are being analysed in this area. It is determined that of all the subjects of legal education studied, only the executive branch has the potential to systematically implement legal education for the entire population, thereby revealing the possibility of ensuring legality in public administration using this tool. This conclusion is due, in particular, to the fact that the executive branch prevails over other subjects of public authority: in terms of the number of state bodies, their branching, and the number of civil servants. This makes it necessary to work primarily on the development of the type of activity by the executive branch and its numerous subjects.

The article reflects the problems of systematization and ensuring legality in the implementation of certain state authorities in the field of migration. The author gives a general description of the newly established Migration Service of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia and analyzes its role in coordinating the activities of federal executive authorities in the field of migration. The article also discusses the issues of redistribution of powers between government agencies to regulate migration processes. In addition, this article identifies the problems of delegating state authority in the field of migration to budgetary institutions, including when conducting exams for foreign citizens in the Russian language, history and the basics of Russian legislation. According to the results of the study, the author points out the need for a balanced scientific and rational approach in the application of methods of centralization and decentralization, as well as in the distribution of powers between subjects of public management of migration processes.

The article reveals general scientific and theoretical approaches to the concept and essence of presidential control, its role in ensuring the rule of law in public administration. It outlines the main content and purpose of presidential control carried out in the field of combating corruption in the Russian Federation. The work analyzes the legal aspects of combating corruption in public administration, the provisions of key regulatory acts governing control activities in this crucial area. The anti-corruption control powers of the President of the Russian Federation, the Presidential Administration of the Russian Federation, its relevant structural divisions, as well as other government agencies are examined. The author points to the existing objective relationship between the control powers of the President of the Russian Federation as the central entity in anti-corruption activities and the administrative and legal mechanism for combating corruption. The author substantiates the idea of the “impulsive influence” of the President of the Russian Federation on the state apparatus with the aim of more effectively strengthening the ongoing anti-corruption policy in Russia. The powers of the subjects of administrative and legal counteraction to corruption are analyzed taking into account the specifics of public administration and the adoption of relevant management decisions. The work also reveals the relationship between state control in relation to the structure of the administrative-legal mechanism for combating corruption in public administration.

The topic of strengthening the rule of law and preventing violations in the field of administrative and other public legal relations in administrative proceedings occupies a key place in modern science of administrative and administrative procedural law. With the adoption of the Code of Administrative Procedure of the Russian Federation, the analyzed task as an element of the procedural form of administrative proceedings acquires strategic importance both for protecting the rights, freedoms and legitimate interests of citizens, the rights and legitimate interests of organizations, and for ensuring the rule of law in the field of activities of public administration bodies. Considering disputes between citizens and the state, the court not only protects the person, but also educates the official, forming the standards of his lawful behavior. The verdict on challenging the actions of the authorities is addressed not only to the parties to managerial legal relations, but also to an indefinite number of officials of public administration bodies, for whom it acquires orienting significance in order to carry out proper public administration. A key but not conceptually elaborated function of administrative justice is the prevention of torts in public administration. We are talking about a preventive effect on the system of public administration, including organizations vested with authority. In the context of expanding administrative discretion and complicating the public functions of the state, the formation of anti-crisis public administration, the preventive potential of administrative proceedings is of particular importance.

The negative impact of economic sanctions, countering modern challenges and threats on the one hand, as well as the active digital transformation of the business space, conducting automation and optimization experiments on the other hand, pose new challenges and goals for the licensing system in the Russian Federation. The key problem is finding the optimal balance between preventive and control mechanisms in the licensing system for certain types of activities. In this regard, the need to develop scientifically based recommendations on the creation of an effective system to ensure the rule of law in the field of licensing is of particular importance. To this end, the author has conducted an analysis of theoretical approaches, norms of current Russian legislation, and law enforcement and judicial practice in the studied area of public relations. Based on a critical examination of the traditional model of licensing control, the author has substantiated the concept of “anticipatory licensing.” Its essence lies in shifting the focus to administrative procedures that minimize the very possibility of violations. The article distinguishes between prevention, as a systematic activity aimed at creating conditions for conscientious compliance with requirements, and control, as an activity aimed at identifying and suppressing violations in the field of licensing. It analyzes specific preventive mechanisms, such as the risk-based approach, the institution of issuing warnings and representations, compliance programs, enhanced verification of applicants’ integrity, transparent qualification requirements, and others. The author argues that the synergy of prevention and licensing control, where prevention is a priority and licensing control becomes selective and targeted, increases the overall legitimacy and effectiveness of the licensing system, reducing the administrative burden on both the regulator and conscientious licensees. In conclusion, the article notes the prospects for the transformation of Russian legislation in the studied area of relations and provides arguments for its improvement, aimed at ensuring the legality and efficiency of the licensing system.

The article presents a study of the problems of ensuring legality in the process of qualifying administrative offenses based on objective criteria. The author’s opinion is presented on the difficulties that accompany the formation of a clear definition of obscene phrases, which characterize the objective side of the qualification of petty hooliganism (Article 20.1 of the Code of Administrative Offenses of the Russian Federation). The author’s analysis is aimed at finding the real conditions for ensuring the legality of legal qualification of actions involving the public use of obscene language in public places, due to the existence of gaps in the current legislation that affect the quality of jurisdictional decisions.

With regard to the qualification of an administrative offense based on the bject of its composition, the author argues that it is crucial to correct the subordinate legal acts in order to ensure their compliance with the Federal Law “On Amendments to Certain Legislative Acts of the Russian Federation in Connection with the Adoption of the Federal Law ‘On Amendments to the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation and the Criminal Procedure Code of the Russian Federation on Improving the Grounds and Procedure for Exemption from Criminal Responsibility’” by specifying the criteria that allow for a clear identification of the object in the composition provided for in Article 6.1.1 of the Code of Administrative Offenses of the Russian Federation.

In modern China, surveillance legislation has unique characteristics that combine legal and political aspects, acting as a link between national legislation and party regulations, thereby providing an institutional framework for translating the fight against corruption into legal regulation. Supervisory laws are closely linked to internal party documents, reflect the key principles and concepts of internal party regulation, and are essentially a legal expression of party discipline, which gives them a more visible political focus than conventional legal norms. The political essence of the supervisory laws is manifested in their unwavering commitment to the leadership of the party, serving the common goals of the party and the state, as well as protecting the fundamental interests of the people. The legal characteristics of supervisory legislation are its central role in the system of the rule of law, determined by constitutional conditionality, specialized nature and procedural regulation.

This article analyzes the specifics of implementing administrative liability as a means of ensuring legality in higher education. The author highlights several features of administrative liability in this area. Firstly, the reputational function is particularly important among the functions of administrative liability, and it is most clearly manifested in the imposition of administrative penalties in the education sector. Secondly, the author demonstrates that administrative liability in higher education is established in many articles of the Code of the Russian Federation on Administrative Offenses, and each of these articles can cover several illegal acts, and provides relevant examples. Thirdly, it is emphasized that laws of the constituent entities of the Russian Federation on administrative offenses also contain administrative prohibitions in the field of higher education, but their peculiarity lies in the fact that they generally only indirectly affect the educational sphere, while the provisions of the Code of Administrative Offenses of the Russian Federation directly regulate it. In conclusion, the author defines the place of administrative liability in the system of administrative enforcement measures.