LAWMAKING COMPETENCE OF STATE AUTHORITIES AND THEIR OFFICIALS: CONCEPT, LIMITS AND FORMS OF IMPLEMENTATION

Abstract

The article examines the lawmaking competence of state authorities and their officials as a special type of public-law competence. It is argued that this competence cannot be reduced to the general authoritative status of a public body or official. It includes a legally defined capacity and, in certain cases, a public-law duty to adopt, issue, amend, suspend or repeal normative legal acts, or to recognise them as no longer valid, only where there is a proper constitutional or statutory basis for such action. The article substantiates that lawmaking competence has a special, procedurally limited and hierarchically subordinated nature. Its key elements include the subject matter of authority, the legal form of an act, the procedure for its preparation and adoption or issuance, the territorial, temporal and substantive limits of its effect, the place of the act in the hierarchy of normative legal acts and the legal consequences of its adoption. It is emphasised that a violation of any of these elements may indicate that the lawmaking subject has acted beyond the scope of the powers granted to it and may call into question the legality of the relevant normative legal act. Special attention is paid to distinguishing the lawmaking powers of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine, the President of Ukraine, the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine, ministries, other central executive bodies, local state administrations and military administrations. The article shows that each of these subjects acts within its own functional, substantive and procedural field, while subordinate lawmaking may not replace legislative regulation. It concludes that the effectiveness of state lawmaking depends on the combination of the proper subject, proper procedure, appropriate legal form and substantive quality of a normative legal act, as well as on subsequent legal monitoring of its implementation.