SOME ASPECTS FOR ENSURING READABILITY OF LEGAL ACTS
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.52026/2788-5291_2023_75_4_61Keywords:
legal act, regulatory legal act, principle of legal certainty, readability, semantic-textual examination, formulas of readability, terms of lawAbstract
The article is focused on the analysis of certain aspects of the problem for ensuring the readability of legal acts. The author argues and substantiates the idea that the need to ensure understandability or readability of legal acts' content is predetermined by the requirements of legal certainty, which is considered as an integral element of the rule of law principle. The need to ensure the implementation of this principle (in the context of regulatory legal acts) is also emphasized by the Constitutional Court of the Republic of Kazakhstan, which in its decisions indicates the mandatory nature of formal certainty, clarity and coherence of legal regulation. These goals, according to the author, can be achieved due to the readability institution of legal acts.
The author of the article focuses on the fact that it is necessary to talk about the readability both in relation to regulatory legal acts, and in relation to acts of application of law (individual acts), which also assist in regulatory impact on social relations.
The author substantiates the position that semantic-textual expertise is an effective method to ensure the readability of legal acts. At the same time, it is indicated that the current approaches to its implementation require significant improvement in relation to the situation in the Republic of Kazakhstan, since, only the authenticity of the texts of regulatory acts in Russian and Kazakh languages is, in fact, checked within its framework. Besides, particular attention is paid to the fact that those legal acts that are issued at the local level remain, in fact, without any semantic-textual examination. Specific suggestions aimed at clarifying the goals and functions of semantic-textual examination are formulated in the article. It is noted, as an intermediate conclusion, that semantic-textual examination must guarantee such a level of clarity and understandability of the law norms that will ensure their easy perception and understanding by the average (in terms of intellectual characteristics) person. To accomplish this, the usage of formula / formulas for the readability of regulatory legal acts should become a mandatory element of such an examination.
The author notes that successful semantic-textual examination cannot be ensured without prior training of the relevant specialists. In this regard, the author of the article brings up for discussion the issue of training (within the framework of University education) legal linguists who are capable (in the future) to identify terminological, lexical-semantic and logical-syntactic errors in legal acts at a high professional level.
Particular attention in the article is paid to the need to develop electronic database of the terms of law, which, first of all, must be constantly updated and, secondly, should be mandatory used by all subjects, primarily by rule-making ones.