Given the substantial number of spheres of public relations that require legal regulation at various levels of power exercising by the government and local selfgovernment, law-making requires the designation of common, primarily conceptual principles of such activities. In modern conditions, the legal regulation of law-making activities should cover a much wider range of issues than it is envisaged by the regulations currently in force.

 First of all, it is necessary to create a system of basic notions and categories that would have unambiguous interpretation for all levels and types of law-making, contribute to a clear understanding of the content of regulations, and could be used as starting points for developing conceptual and categorical apparatus. Modern principles of law-making shall be properly enshrined in the law. It is these principles that form the conceptual basis of the legal regulation of law-making activities. Since law-making is fundamental in terms of building both the national legal system and the system of law as a whole, fundamental legal principles must be formulated in relation to this type of activity as well.

The projection of the general principle of the rule of law – on which any state activity should be based – on law-making allows formulating such fundamental principles of lawmaking as legal certainty, proportionality, reasonableness, appropriateness, and systemic approach, etc. Human-centred concept of law-making requires not only compliance with international human rights standards, but also the involvement of citizens in law-making activities. In this context, the principles of openness and transparency of law-making are absolutely necessary.

Legal regulation of the law-making activity should evolve around mechanisms for realization of law-making powers by respective actors in charge of making laws and realization of the rights of other participants of law-making activities.

An important aspect of the legal regulation of law-making is legislative designation of the types of normative legal acts through their main characteristics. In particular, this concerns such categories as “normative legal act”, “by-law”, “law”, “code”, etc. It would be beneficial to introduce into practice the legal concepts elaborated by legal scholars and not yet enshrined in the legal regulations. In particular, it is worth utilizing the definitions of basic and derivative regulations, model and program regulations, etc.

Issues of law-making structure also require legal definition. In this regard, it is worth paying attention to, first of all, planning. Specifically, there is a need to determine a legal basis for planning of any law-making activity, which will ensure predictability of public policy, uniformity, continuity, and flexibility of the process of preparation and adoption of the normative legal acts, and the coordination of law-making actors’ activities.

 One of the biggest challenges in law-making is to ensure provision of feedback through channels for assessment of the effectiveness of use or application of regulations, especially at higher levels of legislation. Such feedback is necessary for identifying the need to close loopholes in legal regulation or to improve such regulation in any other way. It is possible to tackle respective challenges through the use of the institute of legal monitoring.

In fact, these conceptual provisions have almost become a reality with the adoption by the Verkhona Rada of the draft Law of Ukraine “On Law-making” in the first reading.

Bibliography

Edited books

1. Problemy zastosuvannia mizhnarodnych standartiv u pravoviy systemi Ukrainy (Kubko Ie red, Yurydychna praktyka 2013) (in Ukrainian).

Journal articles

 2. Holovathy S, ‘Verhovenstvo prava (pravovladdia): yak yogo tlumachit Venecyiska komisia’ (2011) 10 Pravo Ukrainy 162 (in Ukrainian).

3. ‘Verhovenstvo prava. Dopovid skhvalena na 86 plenarnomu zasidanni Venecyiskoi komisii 25–26 bereznia 2011 r.’ (2011) 10 Pravo Ukrainy 168–84 (in Ukrainian).