Review of Monograph «Application of the Constitution of the Russian Federation as a Legal Safeguard of Civil Peace and State Security». (Moscow, Russian State University of Justice, 2017)

The Review summarizes the results of studying a monograph prepared by the Department of Constitutional and Legal Research at the Russian State University of Justice, and published under the editorship of Doctor of Law, Professor I.A. Umnova (Konyukhova). The monograph under consideration is devoted to the application of the Russian Constitution in the context of the categories of civil peace and state security. The reviewed monograph is written on the topic that does not allow questioning its relevance. Such categories as «application of the Constitution», on the one hand, and «civil peace», «state security», on the other hand, spark permanent research interest of representatives from various branches of social science. Taking into account the relevance of some threats, this topic obviously will not lose its significance. At the same time, a truly important factor, which predetermines a scientific novelty of the research, is review of respective phenomena in their interrelations, in particular, when the application of the Constitution acts as a mechanism to ensure (guarantee) peace and security. The paper explores various aspects of the outlined problems: theoretical, methodological and constitutional foundations of civil peace and security in the Russian Federation; the practice of implementing the Constitution of the Russian Federation in strategic and policy documents of public authorities; judicial enforcement in the matters of the authors’ interest, etc. The work is executed on a high scientific level, is rather easy to understand and contains numerous examples from law-making and law-enforcement practices. The monograph has some drawbacks that do not affect its overall positive evaluation. In particular, in a number of cases there is a lack of uniformity in understanding the categories important for the research, in different parts of the work. Additionally, it appears that, since the work is devoted specifically to the application of the Constitution, it would be advisable to dwell in more detail on the binding power of strategic and policy documents under consideration, as well as their constitutional predetermination in terms of the content. In general, the monograph makes a notable contribution to the study of both the problems of applying the Constitution and the legal mechanism to ensure civil peace and state security. At the same time, the authors lay a substantial groundwork for further research related to the topic of the work.