Model lawmaking in Ukraine: modernity and prospects

The article considers current issues related to the concept and features of model legal acts and model lawmaking in Ukraine. The authors analyze various approaches to defining these categories in domestic legal science, emphasizing the lack of a single and comprehensive interpretation. The paper draws attention to the fact that existing research is mostly focused on model legislative acts, ignoring a wider range of model legal acts. The authors, based on the analysis of philosophical and legal interpretations of the concepts of “model” and “modeling”, offer their own comprehensive vision, emphasizing the need to distinguish between model regulatory legal acts (model laws and model by-laws) and model legal advisory acts. The authors offer their own definition of a model legal act as a conceptual, written, regulatory or legal advisory document that is developed, approved or adopted by specially authorized entities. It contains model norms and principles designed to regulate social relations by establishing the most general and typical rules of conduct, on the basis of which other legal acts are developed. The article also examines the concept of lawmaking and model lawmaking, which is defined as part of international legal unification. Model lawmaking is an effective tool for the unification and convergence of national legislation, their enrichment and dynamic development. In conclusion, the authors argue that model lawmaking is the process of emergence, formalization, organization, development and existence of law, which involves the formation of model regulatory and legal acts that are the basis for the development of other legal acts. The Ukrainian legislator must take into account the important role of model legal acts in the approximation of international and domestic law, ensuring the systematicity of law, eliminating gaps and conflicts, as well as determining the prospects for the development of legislation. At the end of the article, a new version of Article 18 of the Law of Ukraine “On Law-Making Activity” is proposed, which should clarify and expand the understanding of the model legal act and its classification.