Introduction: The article discusses the legal guarantees of elections and the observance of citizens’ electoral rights in emergency circumstances. The purpose of this article is to identify these guarantees and related current issues in accordance with Russian law. The subject of the study includes constitutional and legal principles of elections, Russian legislation regulating electoral relations in the field of voting in extraordinary circumstances, by-laws of the Central Election Commission of the Russian Federation. The purpose of the article is to determine the legal guarantees for holding elections in extraordinary circumstances in accordance with Russian legislation.

Methodology and materials: general and particular scientific methods of cognition. The author used the analysis method to identify the features of some methods of regulation (postponement and suspension of elections). Using a formally dogmatic method, the author came to the conclusion that there is a legal gap in the voting procedure in extraordinary circumstances. The synthesis method made it possible to take into account the disadvantages of remote electronic voting and come to a conclusion about the risks when using this form of voting.

Research results: The methods of legal regulation at the stage of holding elections in emergency situations have been identified. Elections may be postponed or suspended. These decisions can be made, among other things, based on consultations with law enforcement agencies in order to plan elections as a set of numerous measures and analysis of risks. Termination of elections is not provided for by the current legislation. The legal uncertainty of using the category of “postponement of elections” in the presence of a threat to the life and health of citizens is substantiated. The alternative voting methods provided for by the current legislation are analyzed. Some types of early voting do not provide for a voter to visit a polling station. Remote electronic voting has obvious advantages. However, at the moment, the legal regulation of the remote electronic voting system in Russia has serious drawbacks. The inadmissibility of using remote electronic voting as the only form of voting is substantiated. A legal gap has been identified in the electoral legislation in the form of the lack of sufficient regulation of the voting procedure when moving election documents by members of the precinct election commission in the event of a threat to the life and health of persons present at the polling station. The future regulations should reflect not only the consistent order of organizational actions of PEC members, including the suspension / resumption of voting at the PEC, the preservation of election documentation, but also consolidate the provisions on the protection of life and health of PEC members, observers and other persons located in the premises of the PEC.

Conclusions: The study of legal guarantees for holding elections in emergency circumstances will make it possible to develop a concept of measures aimed at minimizing the negative consequences of certain social and natural phenomena in the field of electoral law. The regulatory approval of the relevant rules will eliminate legal uncertainty in this area, and therefore the actions of participants in the electoral process in critical situations will be determined.

Introduction: The article is devoted to the study of the practice of applying restrictive measures in Spain during 2020–2021. The relevance of the work is due to the need to study foreign doctrinal developments in order to identify problematic aspects and possible reception of promising practices. Particular attention is paid to the issue of the moral obsolescence of legal provisions in the context of protecting constitutional values. The aim of the study is to provide a comprehensive analysis of the provisions of the Spanish Constitution and legislation concerning the introduction of restrictive measures, with a view to identifying the level of their normative “plasticity”.

Methodology and materials: The study is based on the Constitution of Spain, national and regional legislation, Royal Decree-Laws, decisions of the Spanish Constitutional Court, and scholarly literature. The research employs inductive, formal-dogmatic, and formal-legal methods used to analyze, interpret, and systematize legal norms. The methodology is determined by the scholarly objective of conceptualizing the problem of adapting social relations under the functioning of special governance regimes. In the course of social progression, these regimes retain relative stability, which gives rise to a collision of private and public interests and creates an imbalance of guarantees.

Results and discussion: The period of 2020–2021 posed a non-trivial challenge regarding the introduction of restrictive measures under circumstances only conditionally familiar to Spanish practice. An analysis of regulatory provisions, judicial practice, and scholarly research revealed a number of legal defects: 1. The existence of a conflict of competences among public authorities as defined in art. 148–149 of the Spanish Constitution (healthcare, coordination of governance, and regulation of human rights). The specific lexical construction of legal norms contributes to institutional disharmony and negatively affects the assessment of the normative “plasticity” of legal sources. 2. The “state of alarm” regime does not provide for the restriction of human rights, a measure permitted under the declaration of a “state of emergency”. An analysis of the Spanish Constitution, Spain’s Law of June 1 № 4/1981, Royal Decree-Laws, and decisions of the Spanish Constitutional Court shows that the COVID-19 epidemic met the criteria of both regimes, which led to difficulties in legal interpretation. 3. The existing institutional “center – autonomies” model predetermines the heterogeneity of law enforcement, which is positive for cultural individualization but problematic for maintaining a unified system of human rights guarantees.

Conclusions: The examined example of a local political crisis represents a concentrated expression of the vulnerabilities of Spain’s national legal system. The overall level of “plasticity” of normative sources should be recognized as low, which is explained by the specifics of their lexical and semantic construction (the multiple interpretations of Articles 55, 148, and 149 of the Spanish Constitution), as well as the historically conservative nature of Spanish constitutionalism. The need to reconsider the legal category of the “state of alarm” is emphasized. The formulated conclusions have practical significance, as the issue of adaptability of constitutional material is universal, indicating the need for doctrinal revision in other national legal systems as well.

Introduction: International soft law norms emphasize the central role of bodies of the judicial community in all decisions affecting judicial status to ensure independence. In contrast, Russian law involves a broader range of actors in safeguarding judicial immunity — including both judicial community bodies and panels of judges from higher courts.

Methodology and materials: The aim of this study is to identify the specific features of three-judge panels that determine their legal nature within the judicial system. This goal was achieved through an analysis of national legal sources regulating the organization and functioning of such panels, international soft-law standards on judicial independence and impartiality, judicial practice, and academic literature. Methodologically, the research combines general scientific methods (analysis, synthesis, induction) with comparative and formal legal approaches.

The results of the study: Judicial panels are professional bodies of judges that are not formal structural units of the courts in which they operate. Current law provides no criteria for their composition, no procedures for nominating members, and no requirements for judicial rotation. An analysis of their jurisdiction and case law shows that their main procedural function is to protect judges from unwarranted or politically motivated prosecution.

Conclusions: The author contends that judicial panels have a hybrid legal nature: they share features of bodies of the judicial community while also exercising judicial authority, particularly oversight of law enforcement during pre-trial and trial proceedings involving judges. At the same time, their work is largely palliative, as panels do not provide an effective legal mechanism for safeguarding judicial immunity.

Introduction: The article is devoted to the description of the contribution of French constitutionalism to the emergence and development of the institution of constitutional control. The study offers a translation into Russian of the project on the establishment of the Constitutional Jury (still not implemented), describes the history of its discussion, implementation during the First and Second Empires in France, and also provides an assessment of the effectiveness of constitutional control in the designated periods.

Methodology and materials: Due to the fact that in Russian science E.-J. Sieyès’s ideas on constitutional control have not become a subject of study, although they are occasionally mentioned by some Russian-speaking authors, the study is based mainly on French sources. In preparing the material, formal-dogmatic, systemic, comparative and historical research methods were used.

Results of the study: The first proposals for the establishment of constitutional control in France in the 18th century, as well as the reasons for their development, are identified and briefly described. The author characterized the project for the organization of constitutional control by Emmanuel-Joseph Sieyes in 1795. The researcher describes the status of the Protective Senate, established on the basis of the ideas of E.-J. Sieyes in 1799, as well as the procedure for the formation and powers of the Senate during the Second Empire in France. The effectiveness of their activities is assessed.

Conclusions: The constitutional experience of France in the 18th–19th centuries in establishing a body of constitutional control, based on the ideas of E.-J. Sieyes, was the first in political and legal history. It had the following characteristic features: vesting this function in a specialized, rather than a judicial body; granting it related rights, such as the right to initiate amendments to the Constitution, the right of the institution to propose draft laws of national importance; to consider complaints on violations of the rights and freedoms of citizens; to exercise control over laws not only for compliance with the Constitution, but also with religion, morality, freedom of religion, personal freedom, equality of citizens before the law, inviolability of property and the principle of irrevocability of judges; a wide range of persons authorized to apply to this body.

Introduction: The paper is devoted to the development of legal terminology in Russia in the context of the formation of a modern legal language. This research examines the specific terminology of the judicial reform drafts prepared by the Legislation commission of the 1720s.

Methodology and materials: The source base of survey is based on drafts prepared by the Legislation commission by 1726 and currently placed in the Russian State Archive of Ancient Acts. The analysis focuses on the criminal law and criminal procedure sections of the draft Code of the Russian State. The research employs formal-legal and historical methods, as well as quantitative content analysis.

Research results: An examination of the legislative drafts produced by the Legislative commission of the 1720s reveals that the proposed code of criminal procedure was distinguished by its coherence, logical structure, and the precision of the terminology used to describe procedural actions. This was largely a consequence of the synthetic integration of domestic and foreign legal norms, as well as the introduction of new principles of legal drafting into the commissions’ work. These principles were borrowed from foreign legal sources, primarily Swedish and Danish. However, in the criminal law section of this future codified act, such terminological precision and clarity were not as pronounced. This section did not offer overarching concepts for defining offenses and offenders, nor a unified nomenclature for types of crimes, responding to a social reality that was undergoing radical and still-unfinalized changes.

Conclusions: The terminological polyphony inherent in the criminal law section of the draft Code points to an incomplete process of forming a legal language. Within this process, terms competed with each other, and each of the concepts used had the potential to become major. However, the process was not completed, and uniform terminology was failed to emerge. Simultaneously, the active recourse to foreign models — rational, motivated, and meticulously calibrated against the current normative landscape — acted as a catalyst for renovating legal technique and the methodologies for organizing legislative material. The observed changes outline a perspective for a reinterpretation of the development of Russian criminal law, a trajectory traditionally linked to the emergence of jurisprudence as an academic discipline.