Law (legal)

The legislative instrument of a higher agency of state power, adopted in a prescribed manner and possessing a higher legal force in relation to instruments of other state agencies and social organizations. Laws are the basic form of legal expression in contemporary society.
The higher legal force of laws is shown by the fact that they are incontestable (only a legislative body can revoke or change a law), and the acts of all state agencies must conform to laws. Laws occupy the dominant position in the state’s system of legal acts; the legal norms contained in laws usually regulate the basic and most important social relations. The law most fully expresses the state-backed will of the ruling class and its economic and political interests.
According to the significance and character of the legal norms contained in laws, they may be either constitutional or common laws. Constitutional laws predetermine the content of existing legislation and consolidate the fundamental principles of the social and state system, the order of the establishment and activity of state agencies as well as their competence, the electoral system, and the basic rights and obligations of citizens. The adoption or amendment of constitutional laws requires as a rule a two-thirds or three-fourths majority vote in the legislative body and sometimes a referendum.
In socialist countries, a law is a basic legal instrument for resolving political problems and an important tool for economic and cultural development, for ensuring the internal and external security of the state, for the protection of socialist property, and for the expansion and consolidation of socialist democracy. Under the Constitution of the USSR the right to enact laws in the USSR belongs exclusively to the Supreme Soviet of the USSR; the laws of Union and autonomous republics are enacted by the Supreme Soviets of these republics. In other socialist countries the right to enact laws is also the prerogative of higher representative agencies of power (for example, the National Assembly in Bulgaria). The determining role of laws in relation to other legal acts of state agencies is one of the basic principles of socialist legality.
The basic law of the USSR is the 1936 Constitution of the USSR. Of special importance among Soviet laws is the Basic Principles of the Legislation of the USSR and of the Union Republics, a document containing general fundamental regulations for the legislation of all Union republics concerning different branches of Soviet law. Of great importance are the laws concerning the state economic development plan and the laws concerning the state budget. Law codes play an important role in the legislation of Union republics.
The constitutions of the majority of contemporary bourgeois states officially recognize as the highest legal authority the laws adopted by parliament. In actuality, however, acts of the head of state and acts of the government concerning questions relating to the competence of parliament have become increasingly important. To justify this practice, two types of law have been identified in bourgeois jurisprudence: law in the formal sense (as an act promulgated by parliament) and law in the material sense (as an act promulgated by the government and having a general regulative character).
A. F. SHEBANOV