Legal gaps as a result of a law-making error: essential characteristics
Authors: Suniehin Serhii 
Published: December 2024

Introduction. The article is devoted to the study of the essential characteristics of legal gaps as a result of a law-making error. Any law-making activity always accumulates certain subjective characteristics or parameters, because the construction of legal norms is carried out by specific oﬃcials of public and state authorities, who are endowed with individual consciousness and will, as well as relevant interests, beliefs, preferences and other personal qualities and character traits that also have a significant impact on the content and form of legal norms. In connection with the above, in many cases, during the construction of legal norms in the process of law- making activity, can be made mistakes that lead to legal gaps, the identification and overcoming of which occurs already in the process of implementing the law in one form or another.

The aim of the article. The purpose of this article is to determine the essential characteristics of legal gaps as a result of a law-making error and prospects for their elimination in the process of improving legislation.

Results. In our opinion, a law-making error should be understood as an incorrect (incorrect, erroneous, inadequate) perception (assessment) of the subject of law- making activity about general and special patterns of social development, socio- cultural, economic, political and other factors of law-making (content aspect), as well as the nature of legal regulation of social relations, methods, means and rules for the development and systematization of normative legal acts (formal aspect), the result of which can be expressed in legal gaps, collisions (contradictions, inconsistencies) of legal norms, in the absence of predicted (anticipated, planned) consequences of the practical implementation of legal acts, their eﬀectiveness and positive results.

Legal gaps are one of the possible consequences of a law-making error, which will take place in the event that the subject of law-making activity, primarily the legislator, does not respond to the objective necessity and the need for legal regulation of the relevant social relations, thereby causing the uncertainty of the consequences of one or another communicative practices or the entropy (unpredictability) of the free will of legal subjects as their direct participants, as well as when the consequences of the adoption of laws and other regulatory legal acts lead to an increase in social tension or conflict potential of society, other negative consequences of their practical implementation, which indicates an inadequate or erroneous approach of the legislator to the regulation of relevant social relations, which violates the essential purpose of law as a social regulator and turns it into a tool or means of political domination of a limited circle of individuals.

That is why such an approach to understanding legal gaps is the most complete precisely in terms of the substantive component, because the presence of formal and ineﬀective legal regulation, which causes certain problems in law enforcement practice, does not eliminate the relevant gaps, but on the contrary, weakens the public authority of law as a special socionormative system, and hence the normative-legal component of ensuring legality, law and order in the state, determining the need for further adoption, correction or improvement of certain legal norms. In this case, we are talking, relatively speaking, about «unlawful changes to the legislation», which contribute to the growth of legal entropy in the social environment, leading to the disorganization of the existing legal order.

Conclusions. Legal gaps are the complete or partial absence of eﬀective legal norms aimed at ensuring an optimal balance of public and private interests, the necessity and expediency of which is determined by the objective interconnection and interdependence of all social regulators functioning in society, the nature of the development of social relations in the relevant spheres and spheres of life, the needs of practical solutions to socially significant cases and situations, as well as other important components of state and social development.

Improving the content of legislation as a result of law-making activity, increasing the eﬀectiveness of its implementation in the actions of legal entities, which is ensured, among other things, by eliminating legal gaps, first of all requires a correct understanding of the objective regularities of the functioning and development of the entire system of socio-normative regulation, adequate definition and assessment of the temporal-spatial context of the relationship and interaction of at least the most influential social regulators (law, morality and religion), as well as ensuring the optimal model of coherence, the balance of public and private interests in society in relation to the structure and content of rights, freedoms, obligations, interests and higher social values enshrined in law, mechanisms of their recognition, protection and limitation by the state, which corresponds the needs and requests of a stably functioning legal order.

Key words: legal gaps, law-making, law-making error, legal norms, morality, human rights, interest, social norms.