Legal certainty in law enforcement through the prism of ECtHR decisions

Abstract

The problems of legal certainty and legal uncertainty are growing significantly in the field of lawmaking and law enforcement. Thus, the threatening consequences of this are the weakening of the rule of law around the world and the growing number of Ukrainian citizens applying to the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR). The article traces the brief genesis of the principle of "res judicata", emphasizes the various manifestations and forms of legal certainty, and clarifies two groups of requirements for it. In the study, the main attention is paid to the peculiarities of legal certainty in the field of law enforcement. The article is aimed at determining the features and requirements of the principle of legal certainty in court proceedings based on analysis and generalization of ECtHR decisions. It is substantiated that in the generalized form the elemental composition of the principle of certainty in law enforcement includes: requirements for interpretation (in particular, judicial) of normative legal acts and separate norms; legality of resolving legal conflicts and eliminating gaps in current legislation; stability of court decisions; unity of judicial practice. The case law of European judicial institutions in matters of legal certainty is characterized by the position that the problem should be resolved in each case taking into account the facts of the case, their analysis in terms of identity, the relationship between them, as well as their proneness, a combination of stability and dynamism, general and special. Research methods used by the authors of the article include analysis, synthesis, induction, deduction, comparative-legal, formal-legal and logical-legal methods.