Constitutional Legal Values: Concept, Types, and Hierarchy

Constitutional values are fundamental factors in determining the vector of development of the domestic state and law. Analyzing the law enforcement practice, as well as the interpretative activity of constitutional justice bodies, primarily the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation, it is possible to trace which values in the event of legal conflicts receive priority over others. This, in turn, allows most researchers to talk about the hierarchy of constitutional values. What constitutes constitutional values and what should be considered as such is highly controversial in the legal literature. In this article, the author considers constitutional values, analyzes their legal nature and place among other legal values. It offers an author’s vision of understanding constitutional values and their difference from constitutional principles and other provisions of a constitutional nature. It is proposed that the constitutional values include legal freedom, property relations, public order and state security. Constitutional values should not be confused with other provisions of the Constitution of the Russian Federation. The author analyzes the opinions expressed regarding the classification and hierarchy of constitutional values. The problems of their institutionalization at present in the Russian Federation are substantiated, as well as some possible ways of overcoming their speedy implementation in contemporary social reality are expressed. It is concluded that the implementation of constitutional values entirely depends not only on social and economic conditions, but also on the system of public authorities created in the state whose activities should contribute to the realization of individual legal freedom, protection of various forms of ownership, ensuring public law and order and state security. The research methodology is based on the dialectical method, which made it possible to identify the features of constitutional-legal values and their place in the system of socially significant values of public order. The use of the comparative (comparative legal) method contributed to the determination of the properties of those values that may be called constitutional, and to find differences from other legal values. With the help of historical and prognostic methods, the invariability of constitutional and legal values was substantiated and proved regardless of the historical development of the state and law, which indicates their universal (general) nature.