Delegation in constitutional law: theoretical and legal interpretation

Transfer of certain governmental authority constituting the scope of public authorities’ competence, not assuming its general alienation, is a common pattern of our times and in legal science is referred to as “delegation”. This article is supposed to clarify the essence of “delegation” as a notion of constitutional law. For this purpose, delegation is considered as a specific constitutional law notion on the one hand and as a general legal notion traced back to the early legal sources such as Digest of Justinian on the other. Recognized as a separate notion, “delegation” is proposed to be considered with reference to such notions as “state”, “governmental authority”, “separation of powers” and others. Analysis of the notions mentioned above regard to the constitutional law context has made it possible to define delegation in the light of philosophical ideas about the essence of governmental authority and public entities to which it belongs. For instance, ascertaining that governmental authority exclusively belongs to a public-law entity (the state) allowed to designate a specific subject of constitutional delegation, which is neither sovereignty nor state power, but governmental authority shared between the separate branches of government. Besides descripting specific features of constitutional delegation, the article also provides some undermining them in recent decades trends, namely, legislative delegation (i. e. delegation of law-making authority by the legislature to the executive) and private delegation (i. e. delegation of governmental authority to nongovernmental entities).