Given the absence of a legal mechanism for implementation of referendum in Ukraine, even despite the direct effect of the provisions set forth in the Constitution of Ukraine there is no possibility for practical implementation of a number of provisions of the Fundamental Law of Ukraine from the perspective of the people’s will. Working on the draft “referendum” law, the legislator should give consideration to the legal positions of the Constitutional Court of Ukraine (CCU) so as to prevent its possible recognition as non-compliant with the Constitution of Ukraine (as unconstitutional) based on its content. As shown by the analysis of recent research and publications, despite the doctrinebased need for normalization of the relations in terms of organizing and holding of the All-Ukrainian and local referendums, there is still no relevant law on referendums in the system of national legislation. In any State, the will of the people should be the keystone of government’s power, so exercise of the people’s will through adoption of binding decisions is a form of the people’s sovereignty implementation. Such legal considerations underlie a number of legal positions formed by the constitutional jurisdiction body as regards the people’s will.

The article aims at making a substantive analysis of the legal positions of the Constitutional Court of Ukraine formed by the latter in the context of interpreting the provisions of the Constitution of Ukraine regarding referendum as a form of direct democracy, as well as from the perspective where the legislator takes into account its legal positions when developing draft Law No. 3612 on people’s power through the All-Ukrainian referendum.

Results of the study show that a lacking procedural law support to the implementation of referendum as an institution undermines the authority of the Constitution as the Fundamental Law of the State and makes it impossible for the Ukrainian people as “the only source of power in Ukraine” and “the holder of sovereignty” to implement direct power in the State at the All-Ukrainian and local levels, which is inadmissible in a rule-of-law State.

For the first time, resting upon the generalized legal positions of the Constitutional Court of Ukraine, the authors have formed a legal approach according to which inability of the Ukrainian people to exercise their constitutionally enshrined right of power to decide on various issues via referendum is seen as a manifestation of the alienation of “the people’s sovereignty” from its constitutional holder, since referendum is a form of exercise of their discretionary powers.

Presenting their final generalizations, the authors of the publication: a) proposed their own definition of the concept “legal position” as a stable conceptual legal statement of CCU about the content of provisions of law which CCU has formed by subject-systematic assessment and clarification of their conceptual meaning, thus precluding substantive legal uncertainty in the theory and practice of national lawmaking and State-building, or identifying such a substantive legal uncertainty which rulemaking bodies are expected to eliminate; b) identified CCU’s key legal positions from the perspective of the people’s power through referendum; c) reviewed a respective consistency of provisions of draft Law No. 3612 with the legal positions of the constitutional jurisdiction body and thus made a generalization about the need for its substantive refinement.

Bibliography

Vocabulary

1. Slovnyk ukrainskoi movy [Dictionary of the Ukrainian Language], t 6: P-Poity (Bilodid I holova redkol, Naukova dumka 1975) (in Ukrainian).