Legal Regulation, Legal Impact, and Legal Support: An Index of Indeterminacy
Authors: N. M. Onishchenko 
Published: June 2020

Introduction. One of the tasks of the general theory of law is the development of a categorical-conceptual apparatus. All the more, so when it comes to mutually consistent and mutually evolving categories. In our case it is “legal regulation”, “legal influence” and “legal support”. It is clear, that these categories are not synonymous, but it is also clear that they are interdependent in the context of the current regulatory processes.

The aim of the article. The purpose of the article is to demonstrate the correlation of the categories of “legal regulation”, “legal influence” and “legal support”, to point out their non-identical, but interrelated nature.

Results. Modern law in a democratic state is not only directly regulating certain social relations, by fixing in the norms their specific patterns of behavior, rights and obligations of their participants, etc., but also influences their further development, to a certain extent determines the trends of their evolution in the future, thereby ensuring the interests of the subjects of law and the possibility of foreseeing their prospects for their further activity.

Legal regulation can be characterized as a special formalized method of state regulation of actions of legal entities in order to direct their behavior in accordance with the interests of citizens, society and the state, it requires a comprehensive study of the relevant constituents in their inseparable interaction, that is, as a coherent system, consisting of certain links that interact and each of them follows from the previous one.

Any regulation at the same time is, certainly, a certain influence, but not any influence is a regulation, normalization of social life. Legal influence can be characterized as comprehensive and multifaceted (psychological, state-willed, formal, regulatory, etc.) action of law, and legal regulation is a special action of law, which differs in form and content, which is exercised through the subjective rights and obligations of the subjects of law acting as subjects of specific legal relations.

The essence of the category “legal security” must be considered in view of the meaning of the term “security”, the multidimensional meaning of which organically follows from the verb “to provide”, that is, to provide sufficient means for something, to make something real workable, to create the necessary conditions for the implementation of something, to guarantee something. Legal support can be seen as a process that guarantees the effective fulfillment of the objectives of legal regulation; legal support includes not only the relevant legal components, but also specific social factors, circumstances, processes, etc., which mediate the effect of legal rules and constitute a link between law and certain social relations.

Conclusions. Legal support includes: 1) legal regulation; 2) legal influence; 3) a set of measures and guarantees that ensure the reality and effectiveness of the implementation of legal rules. Legal support includes a certain set of phenomena accompanying it, which give legal regulation quality of real efficiency, achievement of the last socially useful and significant results. Legal support is impossible without legal regulation and legal influence, which are its original prerequisites or bases. However, legal regulation and legal influence often take place outside the context of legal support (for example, when formally certain relationships are regulated by law, but there is no effectiveness of legal regulation, so the socially beneficial effect to which it was directed is not achieved).