Court of Human Rights are unfair trials,
inhumane treatment of prisoners, violations of
the right to liberty, and the right to peaceful
enjoyment of possessions (OpenDataBot, 2021).
In this context, the principle of legal certainty is
important, which, in our opinion, should be
considered as part of the principle of the rule of
law and the legal system. As Ognevyuk (2017)
rightly points out, legal certainty sets out
requirements for law enforcement based on
respect for human rights and effective
mechanisms to protect them from unlawful state
interference. However, despite the importance of
this concept, to date, it has not found normative
consolidation and interpretation in Ukrainian
legislation. At the same time, it is inexpedient to
absolutize the certainty of legal regulation,
because the variability of social conditions, the
permanent development of social relations, and
the emergence of new relations lead to the fact
that certainty loses its absolute character,
acquires signs of fictitiousness. Reflecting on
legal certainty as a property of legal regulation,
Rabinovich emphasizes that this category is
always characterized by one degree or another,
and is the object of quantitative and qualitative
measurement, which in practice results in its
relative nature (Rabinovich, 2017). Therefore,
the principle of legal uncertainty is also
meaningful for law enforcement, which
characterizes the dynamic aspect of the law, and
provides flexibility and efficiency in regulating
certain social relations.
Works by Guiwan (2017b), Ognevyuk (2017),
and Pogrebnyak (2009), devoted to the analysis
of recent research and publications, show that the
study of certain aspects of the principle of legal
certainty.
Simultaneously, the analysis of Ukrainian
scientific sources convincingly showed that the
problem of legal certainty is the subject of
scientific understanding primarily, within the
theory of law and science, judicial, and law
enforcement agencies. Some aspects have been
the subject of research in constitutional, civil, and
administrative law. Instead, in foreign sources,
along with general theoretical aspects,
researchers pay considerable attention to industry
issues of legal certainty, they are devoted to
numerous scientific publications. The
intensification of research on legal certainty over
the past three years is largely due to the adoption
of a number of regulations and changes in current
legislation in connection with the spread of the
COVID-19 pandemic, which was marked by
legal uncertainty (Wolters Kluwer Editorial
Staff, 2021). The subject of a wide scientific
discourse of foreign scholars is the question of
the transformation of ideas about legal certainty
and the rule of law (Fenwick, Siems, and Wrbka
(2017), Gardner (2012), Carlin (2012)), the
connection between legal certainty and legal
values (Lifante-VidalIs (2020), Janderová and
Hubálková (2021)), human rights Barak (2010),
Beazley (2020), legitimate expectations and
strategies of states in a pandemic (Brown,
Grogan, and Beqiraj (2021)), antitrust law,
economic and financial activities (Portuese
(2020), Tapia-Hoffmann (2021)), the spread of
international terrorism (Greene (2017), Bekele
(2021)). It is widely believed among foreign
scholars that legal systems should allow those
who obey the law to predict people's behavior
and institutional reactions, as well as prevent the
arbitrary use of state power against them
(Lifante-VidalIs, 2020), and legal certainty is a
key factor in economic growth. At the same time,
it is necessary to take into account the legal
certainty, that excessive emphasis on this concept
may create some tension with other, perhaps
important considerations, especially legal
flexibility Wrbka (2016). These scientific
positions of foreign scholars coincide with the
views of Ukrainian scholars and can be a
methodological basis for interpreting the
relationship between legal certainty and legal
uncertainty.
The dynamism of public relations and Ukraine's
efforts to become an equal member of the
international community, European integration
of political and legal development, as well as the
need to build a just legal order in the face of
global challenges and threats, determines the
relevance of further research taking into account
the scientific positions of foreign scholars.
Methodology
The authors of the study used a number of
general and special methods to conduct the study
in the most effective way. As for the general
methods of cognition, including such common
methods as analysis, synthesis, induction,
deduction, we will not dwell on them due to the
fact that they are well known and do not require
special attention. As for special methods, among
which it is worth mentioning the comparative-
legal method, the formal-legal method and the
logical-legal method, we will analyze them in
more detail.
In particular, the comparative legal method
consists in comparing different state and legal
systems, institutions, categories in order to
identify features of similarity or difference