Russian Journal of Comparative Law

11-19

Authors: David Álvarez

The article examines the Spanish legal system that has been originated in the previous autocratic regime, related to the Common Administrative Procedure. The Government has been reducing until the body top in which ends the State Administration, consequently, conceiving it as a mere appendage or extension of it, which would share their administrative nature. The article 97 of the Constitution definitely discards this conception and retrieves the political scope of the function of governing, inspired by the principle of democratic legitimacy. These traits define the Government and the Administration as constitutionally different public institutions and establishing the subordination of the Administration to the political direction of the precise Government. It must be noted now that the framework governing the legal regime of public administrations is the subject of an express policy adaptation, which configures with consistency and harmony constitutional principles. The Constitution guarantees the subjection of Public Administrations to the principle of legality, both with regard to the rules governing its organization and the legal regime, the administrative procedure and the accountability system. On the other hand, the Local Administration has a legal regime is established in the same article 149.1.18. The Constitution has a specific regulation in the current “Ley de Bases” that does not offer any difficulty of adaptation to the objectives of this Act and which does not require specific modifications.

29-37

Authors: Viacheslav Liubashenko

The article seeks to examine the approaches of states, namely the UK, Germany, France, the USA, South Africa, to the domestic implementation of the responsibility to protect, particularly the responsibility of the state as a member of the international community to protect. It contains an analysis of the position of states on the legal nature of the responsibility to protect concept, foreign policy of states and their activities in international organizations towards the implementation of the responsibility to protect, as well as the position on the military intervention. Author argues that there are two approaches to the implementation of the responsibility to protect: formalistic and institutional. The formalistic approach can be described as the implementation of the responsibility to protect in the foreign policy of the state without a corresponding reinforcement of the mechanisms on its implementation. The institutional approach stipulates the implementation of the responsibility to protect both in the foreign policy doctrine of the state and in the internal state structure, which allows to coordinate policies and to identify an integrated approach of the state to the implementation of the responsibility to protect.

48-55

Authors: Pekka Riekkinen

Departing from the principle of municipal autonomy the article overviews the history and the competence of modern municipalities in Finland. It moves to the issues of welfare functions of municipalities regarding implementing economic, social, and cultural rights. The main constitutional problem which arises when one focuses on the welfare functions of Finnish municipalities is the on-going social services reform in Finland, known as “SOTE”. This reform aims at creating new social and health service production districts replacing the existing municipalities currently carrying out such welfare functions. In the present constitutional settings of Finland several important public law dilemmas stem from the “SOTE” project. We analyze these problems and come to a conclusion that direct local elections to the social district management board would allow one to avoid decisive constitutional problems deriving from the constitutional right to local democracy.