THE CORRELATION OF THE RESPONSIBILITY OF THE INDIVIDUAL AND THE STATE WITHIN THE LEGAL FRAMEWORK AS A PREREQUISITE FOR INTERNATIONAL LEGAL RESPONSIBILITY OF THE STATE

Abstract

The article aims to study the category “responsibility of an individual and a state before the law” and determines the correlation through a systematic analysis of general and special characterological and identification features, and on this basis attempts to response to the question if a state is responsible to a person in international law. The next problem is determined by the fact that the issue of responsibility in legal science is the most debated, but still remains the most complex and controversial one. No other topic in law might have caused so much discussion as the responsibility perspective.

It should be taken into consideration that the problem of responsibility has its strategic origins in a general philosophical understanding of the positioning (place) of the individual in a modern state and the respective correlation of the rights and obligations of the individual and the state. The methodological basis of the article comprises the relevant scientific methods, notably historical, logical and comparative methods, analysis and theoretical research method. The attempt to scrutinize the phenomenology of the responsibility of the individual to the state and the state to the person in view of legal relationship, to determine the regularities thereof and provide a theoretical rational for the responsibility of the state in international law to the person is deemed topical. The study is based on a critical analysis of the latest developments of Ukrainian and international scholars.

The findings of the research allowed to draw to the conclusions that in law and modern international law in particular, the state is responsible to the person only in case this responsibility is expressly provided for in legal norms (Constitution, law, and court decision) or in the norms of international law (conventions, treaties, customs, decisions of the International Court of justice, etc.), but the state formally and normatively does incur obligation to act responsibly, that is, morally, although this issue is being disputed in recent studies.

Consequently, if the state has violated the norms of law, which regulate its activities with regard to the individual, then it will be liable to the individual for violation of the norms of law and violation of the norms of international law and, accordingly, it will cause legal liability under the norms of domestic legislation or international legal liability for violation of the norms of an international treaty. However, when we consider the responsibility of a person regarding the law, his or her natural duty is to act responsibly, namely morally, and avoid committing violations of social expectations embodied in the legal norm.

Hence, a person’s responsibility arises not only in respect of violating the right, but also for violating the norms of morality, that is, for behaviour that differs from social expectations – a model (standard). In view of the above, it is possible to arrive at a conclusion that there is no unity of views in the definition of the term “responsibility” in science. This is due to the fact that this term integrates philosophical and legal concepts that result in complexity in generalized and comprehensive interpretation and are characterized by the interpenetration of these concepts.

However, the general content of responsibility should be construed as the process of determining the following system complex of questions:

1) who is responsible (an individual or the state)?

2) what or whose behaviour entail responsibility (legitimate or illegal; one’s own or someone else’s)?

3) the degree of awareness of responsibility for behaviour (for a person),

4) legal consequences (punishment or encouragement) for the violation committed.