Significance and role of the Constitution in ensuring national security: aspects of essential characteristics
Authors: Lemak O.V. 
Published: August 2024

The article is devoted to the analysis of constitutional and legal problems of ensuring the security of society and the state in all their multifaceted economic, political and legal content. Negative factors affecting basic constitutional values are indicated: conflicts, gaps and other defects in legislation, inconsistencies between natural law and positive norms, legal nihilism of subjects of constitutional-legal relations, low level of their legal culture, abuse of law.
Legal (legal) security, which is a derivative and integral component of information security, is analyzed. It is argued that in a legal state, legal information is the basis of the existence of the state itself, its ability to successfully protect the values of civilized coexistence.
The purpose of the research was to determine the essence of the constitution, as a normative and legal basis for resolving social contradictions in society and the state and achieving on this basis the security of the individual, society and the state, as a legally legitimized balance of interests of all social groups of society, as a measure of the balance achieved in society and the state between power and freedom.
The article deals with issues related to risk factors in the field of legal security and risk factors that are directly related to law-making or law enforcement. The issues and directions of protection of the Constitution itself at the level of national security against attempts at illegitimate modernization, facts of replacing constitutional norms with political expediency have been studied.
The position that the Constitution should define internal security by establishing a certain level of the degree of protection of its own provisions at the level of national security is substantiated, since attempts to illegitimately modernize the Constitution and the facts of replacing constitutional norms with political expediency remain relevant.
It is argued that constitutional security is an integral part of national security, as it primarily involves the security state of the country’s constitutional system and the main act that enshrines it - the Constitution, including the elimination of its abuse.
An analysis of the relationship and interdependence of the concepts «constitutional law», «national security» and «constitutional security» was carried out.
Conclusions were made that, based on the essential characteristics of the constitution, as a set of main norms of direct action, it is an indisputable and unique guarantee of the stability of the political system, the main guarantor of the realization of the vital values of the people, a legally legitimized balance of interests of all social groups of society, to the extent achieved in society and the state balance between power and freedom.
The argument is supported that practically all institutions of constitutional law have a direct influence on the provision of the national security system. This is confirmed in almost all functions of the constitution - constitutive, organizational, foreign policy, ideological and, of course, legal, and therefore - they must receive consistent specification and development in sectoral as well as special legislation, which has as its subject the legal regulation of national security.
It is proposed that since the legal regulation of national security is carried out by the Constitution of Ukraine and other acts of constitutional legislation, accordingly, it is a full-fledged institution of constitutional law and is subject to study within the framework of the subject of constitutional and legal science.
It is noted that any measures to ensure national security cannot be carried out outside the legal field of the state, in a way and by bodies not provided for by legislation, and since the Constitution is the basis of legislation, we have every reason to consider ensuring national security as the main function of the Constitution, along with regulation of other spheres of social relations.