The Place of Recommendatory Norms in the Mechanism of Legal Regulation: From Soviet Doctrine to a Contemporary Interpretation

The article examines the place of recommendatory norms within the mechanism of legal regulation and outlines the principal approaches developed in Soviet legal doctrine and in contemporary legal scholarship. It analyses the legal nature of recommendations, their correlation with mandatory and dispositive prescriptions, and the criteria that distinguish recommendatory formulations from other instruments of legal influence. Special attention is paid to the limits of normativity of recommendatory prescriptions, their function in supporting legal certainty and coherence of law enforcement, and the manner in which courts treat instruments of a recommendatory character. The article concludes that recommendatory norms constitute an autonomous element of legal regulation, whose regulatory significance is primarily expressed through their guiding effect and through requirements of reasoned and properly delimited reliance on such instruments, which allows for a more precise understanding of their role in the legal system and prospects for further scholarly debate.