The Term Concept of Right and Unright in Practical and Theoretical Jurisprudence
Authors: Rabinovych Petro , Myrtsalo Pavlo 
Published: December 2021

The article examines some modern trends in the development of domestic legislation, as well as general theoretical legal thinking. One of them is a noticeable spread in the legislative acts of Ukraine of those terms that have an outlet to the problem of legal understanding, for example, they

talk about such words as: «right», «justice», «unjust sentence», «unright agreement», «unright use», «unright actions», «unright gain». Such terminology can be directly used in legal regulatory practice, and taking into account the pluralism of legal thinking, known from ancient times to this day, inevitably there is a need for an official explanation, interpretation of one or another of the given terminological concepts.

In all the above cases, the following question will inevitably arise: the terms above are synonyms for the adjectives lawful, illegal, and are similar to them? Or, on the contrary, in the examples given above, they are talking about some other – meaningful and different – from legal / illegal – phenomenon? If we are inclined to the first answer, the question arises: for what purpose different terms were used to name the same phenomenon? If we support the second of the possible answers, then it directly leads to the problem of legal thinking.

One of the aspects of the general problem of legal thinking is the substantive allocation of the so-called phenomenon of the antipode of the phenomenon of right, – the phenomenon of unright. The urgency of solving this practically significant task is illustrated, in particular, by the fact that, for example, in the current Criminal Code of Ukraine, adjectives unright gain are used almost sixty times!

What complex of problems in legal regulation, this situation generates, can be seen by analyzing, for example, the reaction of the Constitutional Court of Ukraine regarding the inconsistency of the Constitution of Ukraine with the provisions of Art. 375 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine. Arguing this decision, the Constitutional Court of Ukraine referred to the fact that, in particular: a) formulation of this article allows possibility of abuse by the bodies of pre-trial investigation, in connection with legal clarity, unambiguity in content of the norm is lost when they are applied; b) the situation under discussion creates the possibility of an official assessment of the court decision by non-judicial bodies, which contradicts the principle of the distribution of power.

It seems remarkable that in response to the aforementioned decision of the Constitutional Court of Ukraine, almost half of those judges who took part in the consideration of this case expressed separate opinions in which they thoroughly criticized the arguments of the Court. Without resorting to a specific analysis of each of these thoughts, we state the pluralistic interpretation of the first part of the complex word «unjust» by different judges of the Constitutional Court of Ukraine. We explain it by the socially-natural heterogeneity, the interpretation of any evaluative legal concepts by various subjects of society in the process of legal regulation.