Legal acts of local self-government bodies: some theoretical and practical aspects

Abstract

It is noted that a natural outcome of the legislative and law enforcement activities of local self-government bodies
is the adoption of legal acts, which, according to the established approach in legal science, are divided into normative
and non-normative (individual legal acts). It is argued that the current legislation of Ukraine is not without certain flaws,
particularly those legal norms that establish provisions for the annulment of illegal individual legal acts, disregarding
an important legal circumstance that should be determined during the consideration of relevant court cases whether such
a decision has been executed at the time of filing the lawsuit. Additionally, the proposal to unify the terminology used
to denote the same phenomenon, namely the non-compliance of legal acts, including those of local self-government
bodies, with the laws of Ukraine, such as “illegality”, “invalidity”, and “unlawfulness”, is substantiated. Based on doctrinal
approaches, judicial practice, particularly that of the Grand Chamber of the Supreme Court, and provisions of certain
legislative acts, the proposal to supplement part 1 of article 21 of the Civil Code of Ukraine with a new second paragraph
of the following content is justified: “An individual legal act issued by a state authority, an authority of the Autonomous
Republic of Crimea, or a local self-government body that has exhausted its effect through execution and contradicts civil
law acts and violates civil rights or interests shall be recognized by the court as illegal and shall not be subject to annulment”.
The proposed amendment is intended for cases where an individual legal act has already exhausted its effect through
execution. It is emphasized that cases where an individual legal act has not been executed for various reasons should
be grounds for applying part 1 of article 21 of the Civil Code of Ukraine regarding the recognition and annulment of such
an act by the court. Corresponding changes, which consider the peculiarities of the annulment of individual legal acts,
are proposed to be made to clause 2 of part 1 of article 5 of the Code of Administrative Procedure of Ukraine. A general
conclusion is formulated that any decisions, actions, and/or inactions of authorities, including local self-government
bodies, that contradict the principle of legality should be qualified as illegal, which should contribute to the unification
of the terminological apparatus of certain substantive and procedural legislative acts of Ukraine that establish ways
to protect rights, as well as the relevant powers of the court to recognize legal acts as contradictory to legislative acts
and violating the rights or interests of individuals or legal entities, by replacing the terms “unlawfulness”, “invalidity” with
the term “illegality”.